Work – Bryan Strawser

Over at Design Observer, Michael Bierut writes about his 85 notebooks that he’s used over the last 26 years:

When I look at these notebooks, many of the references bring back memories, some decades old. But other times I frankly can’t remember why I was writing these things down. Did I ever call Dilland? Whatever happened to Executive Sign? What was the Lefand Alliance? In many ways, the act of notetaking and sketching is an end in itself for me. Many of these pages, filled with trivia as they are, are destined never to be looked at a second time.

I’ve been writing in my own notebooks for the last three years.

On Friday, I was rearranging my office at Target – looking to make some more collaborative space and generally simplify a few things – I came across the drawer with my notebooks in them. They provided me with a nice romp through the last three years of projects, meetings, trips, feedback, things to do, and drawings.

I saw the measurements for my home office before furniture shopping, a great quote from a mentor of mine over breakfast, notes from my annual reviews of the last few years, reminders of things I needed to take care of, and a sketch for the room layout of our crisis center. Great memories.

Chartreuse has long been one of my favorite bloggers – his photograph laden posts read like a visual form of poetry. Even though he posts much rarer today than he did a few years back, I’ve been enjoying his occasional post — I think he has one of the most interesting views on Web 2.0 and the state of the world today.

In his post from earlier this week, Chartreuse talks about Lessons for Upper Management from INXS:

These are turbulent times. And despite what some people think, it ain’t going away soon.

Your company needs to be careful about the assumptions it makes.

You should be listening carefully not just during the bad times but doing the good times as well. And stick to your core beliefs.

If you do the hard times won’t come as such a surprise.

In a world of Black Swans preparing for the unexpected is…expected.

Now INXS was one of my favorite bands, so of course I’m going to check this one out.. but I actually enjoyed this post (and his previous post The Layman’s Guide to the End of the World (part one)) so much that I sent both of them to my team at work.