This is Spark & Recover your regular dose of cool tools, insights and recommendation, all curated by me.
On this week's issue...
Motivational data (and beautiful too!)
I found this very inspiring site: Who Old Are You. It's an interactive chart where your age is compared to famous artists, thinkers, entrepreneurs at the time they achieved their greatest accomplishments.
It's very uplifting and reminds me that it's not late to create and do great things.
Kitchen knife gift
Last week, I had this wonderful gift idea to a friend for his birthday: Kuma Chef Knife Everyone can use a perfectly balanced, lifelong kitchen knife. It had the best reviews and cost only $25. It's ergonomic and optimized for your hand and will last for years to come. He loved it and I'm sure he'll remember me every time he dices some tomatoes.
The Wandering Mind: How creativity increases with boredom
There is a a scientific link between piercing to a new creative high and accepting to be bored. With technology and smart phones today we don't know what it feels to be bored anymore. Now we know that learning to do "nothing" and eventually accept boredom can lead to interesting ideas and insights.
The article also discusses the problem of smart phone addiction. Fortunately I started working on my addiction to screens since I discovered people in tech doing that. I always schedule screen-less Saturday mornings. I've been following that practice for a year and I discovered through it who I was with regards to using technology.
It's interesting when you start having those "why can't I just sit here doing nothing?" moments. Machines are supposed to follow our will, not us follow theirs.
Keep your goals to yourself
Research has shown that when you tell your goals to other people your brain registers that as "done", "over", "I don't have to deal with it anymore". Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer introduced it as the concept of Implementation intention.
Derek Sivers explains it well in his blog here and on his mini-Ted Talk here. It's contrary to common belief but you have to try it.
Bolivian Salt Plateaus
This short film made the Bolivian filmmaker Enrique Pacheco invites you to admire the beauty of the salt flat of Uyuni and the province of Potosí in Bolivia. The reflections produced by the water invites dreams from another world , where the sky meets the earth.
Watching this reminds me of the immensity of our planet and how tiny we are next to those titanesque mountains and infinite lands.
A wholesome fun movie to watch
Office Space (1999)
I don't know what is it but there is something about those old tv movies that make them just nice to watch. This movie with Jennifer Aniston, back when she was still on "Friends", was a perfect week-night movie. I actually watched this movie for the time last week.
It's about the - then new - Silicon Valley world where people just started to get frustrated about working in cubicles, and how they started portraying asshole bosses that acted as lords on office space. By the way it was directed, scripted and written by Mike Judge, the guy behind Silicon Valley show on HBO.
Link of the movie here ;)
And that's it for this week! Hope you're enjoying my Spark & Recover weekly letter.
Follow me https://steemit.com/@achraf7b for next week's issue. (I actually changed the schedule and I'm making these every Saturday instead of Fridays.)
Find last weeks' issues here: Week 2 and Week 1.
P.S. Just one more cool page I found on Steemit about how to align images in the text editor (that is frankly a pain in the a** to use.)