On Stories and Memorization

Knowing the stories isn’t memorization. Once you know the stories you know how one thing causes another, how things are related and reflected, and you can think about the present and the future. And you end up knowing pretty well when things happened — because you know how things fit together — even if you don’t recall every single precise date and the names of every player.

Brent Simmons on why memorization isn’t just to remember facts, but to tell stories.

Work Life Imbalance by Rian van der Merwe

“See, the time I spend with people is what gives my work meaning. I do what I do for them—for the people in my life, the people I know, and the people I don’t. If we never spend time away from our work, how can we understand the world and the people we make things for?”

Rain’s first column on A List Apart is already one of my favorites. A cliché as it is to say this I will. I could quote the whole damn thing.

Remember, everything your employer or client does is to get more out of you. It’s not nefarious, it’s driven into everyone. From the employee feeling like they have to work hard (and they should ) long (and they shouldn’t) hours to the leaders trying to get the most out of their employees. It’s a vicious circle. Only you as an individual can change that.