Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a wonderful 2018 book by the designer Ingrid Fetell Lee titled Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness. A preview is at Google Books. And there is an excerpt from the introduction. The ten chapters, a JOYFUL TOOLKIT and their starting pages are titled and numbered as follows:

 

Energy                       13

Abundance                42

Freedom                    73

Harmony                  103

Play                          134

Surprise                   164

Transcendence       189

Magic                       217

Celebration             245

Renewal                  271

JOYFUL TOOLKIT  299

 

Chapter 6, Surprise begins:

 

“I sat near the head of a boardroom table in a towering office building in Sydney, my heart fluttering inside my chest. The table seemed to stretch a mile from end to end. All along its edges sat the directors of business units, division heads, and people whose titles start with the letter C. Three weeks earlier, full of bravery and blind optimism of a twenty-four-year-old who had just moved to the opposite side of the world by herself, I had talked my way into a trial run as a brand consultant, a job I had never dine before. I had worked nonstop since then on a brand analysis for the client’s new business, expecting that my boss would be the one presenting it. But a few days before the meeting, my boss told me he believed that the people who did the work should speak for it and that, despite my lack of experience, he wanted me to give the presentation. So there I was, pale faced and shaky, awaiting the calamity that I was certain would follow as soon as I opened my mouth.

 

As the last few attended straggled in, I tried closing my eyes and taking deep breaths, but as I did so, memories of my previous misadventures in public speaking rose to the surface, and I began to feel even more panicked. I snapped my eyes open and looked down at my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a burst of color. A pair of rainbow-striped socks peeked out from under a charcoal-gray pant leg. They seemed so incongruous I wanted to laugh out loud. I looked up at the wearer. It was the imposing, no-nonsense head of the digital business. His eyes followed my gaze to the socks. Then he looked back up, smiled and winked. A moment later I heard my boss bring the meeting to order and call on me to begin the presentation.

 

Joy has a way of showing up when we least expect it. As we move through the stream of daily life, tiny moments can capture our attention and turn our thoughts in a joyful direction. These moments can be especially powerful in times of stress or sadness. My encounter with the rainbow socks didn’t magically transform me into a brilliant presenter, but it did something else that was helpful in that moment: it interrupted my anxious inner monologue, turning my attention from the highlights reel of my past failures to the incredible opportunity I had before me to share my work with an eager audience. It pulled me back into the room and widened my perspective. Suddenly, I found myself wondering what else might not be as it seemed. Maybe hiding inside all those power suits were other warm or funny people. Maybe my boss wouldn’t have given me such a big client if he didn’t think I was capable of handling it. Maybe I could do this after all. I can’t say I wasn’t nervous as I stood in front of that room. In fact, I clutched a water glass for the entire two-hour presentation so tightly my boss later said he could see my white knuckles. But despite my jitters, there were moments when I had to admit to myself that I was actually having fun. In the end I did well enough to turn my trial run into a full-time job and gained more opportunities to practice speaking my mind in public.”

 

The JOYFUL TOOLKIT has a JOYFINDING WORKSHEET on page 302 that has the following questions to think about:

 

PLACES

Where do I feel most joyful?

What is joyful about these places?

What aesthetics define these places?

 

PEOPLE

Who are the most joyful people I know?

What is joyful about these people?

What aesthetics do these people embody?

 

THINGS

What are the most joyful objects in my house?

What is joyful about these things?

What aesthetics do these things exhibit?

 

ACTIVITIES

What activities bring me the most joy?

What is joyful about these activities?

What aesthetics are present in these activities?

 

And The JOYFUL TOOLKIT has a parallel Killjoys Worksheet on page 304 which has the following questions to think about (but none for PEOPLE):

 

PLACES

Where do I feel least joyful?

What about these places kills my joy?

 

THINGS

What are the least joyful objects in my house?

What about these things kills my joy?

 

ACTIVITIES

What activities bring me the least joy?

What about these activities kills my joy?

 

There is a 2 page pdf Joyspotter’s Guide at The Aesthetics of Joy.

 

Ingrid has a 14-minute TED talk on June 11, 2018 titled Where Joy Hides and How to Find It | Ingrid Fetell Lee | TED. A second 19-minute TED interview by Chris Duffy on September 3, 2025 is titled How to Be More Joyful (W/ Ingrid Fetell Lee) | How to Be a Better Human | TED.

 

A cropped version of Dirck Hals Joyful Gathering painting came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

An Incidental Comic by Grant Snider about not needing a bookmark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes a comic strip can show you something very creative. On November 29, 2025 Grant Snider at Incidental Comics had one titled The Best Part with the following dialogue:

 

“The best part

  of reading two books at once:

  don’t need a bookmark.”

 

I illustrated it with an image. On October 11, 2024 I had blogged about A book on creativity from Grant Snider – profusely illustrated by comics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is almost the same geometry as used on couplings for railroad cars, as shown above.

 

A very useful recent book by George Newman about how great ideas happen

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a very useful 2026 book by George Newman titled How Great Ideas Happen: The hidden steps behind breakthrough success. An article by George Newman at the NextBigIdeaClub in January 27, 2026 titled The Surprisingly Simple Formula Behind Breakthrough Ideas also discussed it. There are a dozen chapters in the book, three each in four parts:

 

Part 1 - Surveying Where to Search for Ideas

Chapter 1: Burn the Cabin Down

Chapter 2: Originality Ostriches

Chapter 3: Bottoms Up!

 

Part II - Griddings: Organizing Your Search

Chapter 4: The Guiding Question

Chapter 5: Think Inside the Box

Chapter 6: Transplanting

 

Part III - Digging: Unearthing Promising Ideas

Chapter 7: More Is More

Chapter 8: Search Far and Wide

Chapter 9: The Spark

 

Part IV – Sifting: Choosing Which Ideas to Pursue

Chapter 10: Create By Subtracting

Chapter 11: How Ideas Feel

Chapter 12: The Learning Curve

 

On page 63 (as shown above) he says that:

 

“…the most successful creatives I know have a striking thing in common: They have developed a knowledge funnel. They know a lot about one or two things and a little about a lot of things. But more than just that, they are highly adept at relating those foreign ideas back to their own expertise. Great visual artists will take concepts from philosophy or science and translate them into their preferred medium. Great musicians can take ideas from completely different musical genres or totally different arts and connect those ideas back to their own instrument. Great chefs might find inspiration from ideas totally unrelated to food or cooking. And some of the most successful scientists I know can take a concept from some distant field, translate it into the language of their own expertise, and see the implications for a problem they are working on.”

 

In Chapter 4 on page 83 he defines:

 

“THE FOUR FEATURES OF A GUIDING QUESTION

 

SPECIFIC: It is phrased in a way that allows you

  to narrow in on a particular niche area.

OPEN-ENDED: It encourages multiple answers

  rather than a single correct one.

MOTIVATING: It engages curiosity and

  motivates you to delve deeper.

MEASURABLE: It has measurable outcomes

  to determine if you’re on the right path.”

 

In his Conclusion: Getting Unstuck on page 243 he describes three roadblocks:

 

Roadblock #1: You haven’t done enough work up front

Roadblock #2: You’ve settled on an idea too early.

Roadblock #3: You’ve fallen in love with an idea, not the process.

 

And on Page 245 he describes The Creative Explorer’s Toolkit:

 

Don’t be an Originality Ostrich.

Expand Your Influences.

Be a Problem Finder.

Embrace the Constraints.

Keep Digging.

Explore the Uncomfortable Ideas.

Think about Floating a Raft (versus Building a Tower).

Invite Others In.

 

My funnel was adapted from a miniature image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

An intriguing 2026 book by Gerald Zaltman about daring to think differently

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an intriguing 2026 book by Gerald Zaltman titled Dare to Think Differently: How open-mindedness creates exceptional decision making. A preview of the first eighteen pages is at Google Books.

 

This book has nine chapters and two appendices titled as follows:

 

ONE What is a mind anyway?  1

AND WHAT IS IT FOR?

 

TWO Serious Playfulness  25

WHY YOU NEED CONSTRUCTIVE MISCHIEF

 

THREE Befriending Ignorance  47

MAKING ‘I DON’T KNOW’ AN ALLY

 

FOUR The Power of Surprising Yourself  69

ASKING THE RIGHT DISCOVERY QUESTIONS

 

FIVE The Art of Being Curious  87

CHASING YOUR CURIOSITY

 

SIX Panoramic Thinking  105

TRANSITIONING FROM HEDGEHOG TO FOX

 

SEVEN Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark  123

USING THE ‘VOYAGER OUTLOOK TO EMBRACE AMBIGUITY

 

EIGHT Being Smart Isn’t Enough  143

HAVING AN OPEN MIND MATTERS MORE

 

NINE Fluid Thinking, a Reprise  155

LEVERAGING THE POWER OF BEING CONSCIOUSLY UNCONSCIOUS

 

APPENDIX 1 Aha! Spas  165

CREATING PERSONAL SPACE FOR SERIOUS PLAY

 

APPENDIX 2 The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Techniques (ZMET)  173

A TOOL FOR SURFACING UNCONSCIOUS THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS

 

There is a very interesting discussion on pages 156 and 157:

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"AN INNER VOICE

 

From time to time I’ve referenced an inner voice, a kind, wise conscience that prompts you with strategic and tactical Am I? and Are we? questions. Everyone has an inner voice, but not everyone listens to it. We are reminded of this whenever we hear the voice of hindsight singing, ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda.’

 

Figure 9.1 [shown above in my colorized version] represents the salient features of fluid thinking and its waypoints such as memory and intuition. One or more open mind actions like befriending ignorance, panoramic thinking, and so on are likely to be engaged at each waypoint. Your inner voice plays an important role in orchestrating this process. It guides your involvement at each waypoint and your decision to revisit earlier waypoints. In other words, the entire process is a complex, adaptive system.

 

OVERVIEW OF THE DECISION CONTEXT

 

The six open-mind actions drive your use of your conscious and unconscious knowledge stored in your internal and external sources of memory. (and yes, even relying on AI involves your unconscious use of someone else’s assumptions.) The knowledge produced provides judgments or intuitions, which are augmented by imagination to yield insights. Analogical thinking and the use of metaphor are especially prominent here. Insights stimulate improvisation in the form of planned or actual behaviors. These behaviors provide constructive feedback, which may lead to changing or adapting initial actions. Feedback may be either instantaneous, as re rapidly contemplate our plans, or delayed, as we wait for results after putting a plan into action. In either case, feedback provides learning that updates or alters prior knowledge. These updates become stored memories available for future use.

 

What makes this system adaptive is that each waypoint can receive direct feedback from any other waypoint. Moreover, each waypoint is an adaptive system in and of itself making creative use of the system of the six actions. Think of your mind as a kind of dance hall, in which the conscious and unconscious operations involved in the various actions meet up and introduce themselves through overt and covert signals to the conscious and unconscious operations of each waypoint. The architecture for this becomes our mental models or theory-in-use.”

  

 

Before bows and arrows, hunters used spear throwers called atlatals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a 2025 book by Sam Kean titled Dinner with King Tut: How rogue archeologists are re-creating the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations. I blogged about it in a post on January 26, 2026 titled What did Egyptian laborers who built the pyramids eat? That book has eleven chapters that cover the following dates:

 

Africa – 75,000 years ago

South America – 7500 BC

Turkey -6500s BC

Egypt – 2000s BC

Polynesia – 1000s BC

Rome – AD 100s

California – AD 500s

Viking Europe – AD 900s

Northern Alaska – AD 1000s

China – AD 1200s

Mexico – AD 1500s

 

Chapter 2, South America – 7500 BC, has a section starting on page 67 about a spear thrower (shown above) called an atlatal:

 

“The atlatl is a two-foot-long stick with a hook or spur on one side. The darts are wooden shafts with a stone point hafted to one end and a concave cup carved into the other. (Asana prefers shorter darts, a yard or so long, since they can double as spears in a pinch). To load an atlatl, you hold it at shoulder-height, parallel to the ground, and fit the cup end of the dart into the spur-hook. To fire the dart, you step forward and snap the atlatl down with your wrist. Imagine flicking paint off a paint-brush – same motion. Overall, your thigh and core generate the power, which gets channeled into the dart via the arm and snapped wrist.

 

To the uninitiated, the atlatl probably seems baroque. Why not just hurl a spear, instead of using a stick to fling it? A detailed answer would require a long digression into the physics of levers and rotational velocity, but the basic idea is this: the longer your arm, the faster you can throw something. (Think of those long plastic ball-throwers for playing with dogs.) Atlatals effectively lengthen your arm by a foot or two and therefore provide a huge speed boost: experts can fling the darts 80 mph, while spears alone top out around 50 mph. Speed is a major factor in a weapon’s penetration ability and knockdown power, so atlatl darts are pretty darn deadly.

 

Despite their obscurity nowadays, especially compared to spears or arrows, atlatls were probably the most widely used hunting weapon in prehistory, in climates from the tropics to the poles. As a result, there’s a serious contingent of atlatl enthusiasts within experimental archaeology.

 

I get to try atlatls myself during an undergraduate class that Mein Eren teaches. We meet at a frisbee golf course near campus, where he unloads several dozen atlatl darts from his pickup. Each is around six feet long and a bit less than an inch thick, and they’re fletched with fake feathers – neon, green, black-and-blue, crimson. I’m surprised how bendy they are, quite flexible. Atlatlists debate why that flexibility matters, but rigid darts simply don’t fly as straight or true: darts need spring.

 

The atlatls Eren hands out are pretty basic – wooden sticks with hooks. Most people throughout history used something similar, but the inhabitants of the treeless altiplano would have saved their wood for darts and made atlatals from the leg bones of vicunas. (I actually stumbled across one such bone on a walk in Peru. It was bleached white, and differed from traditional atlatls in that it had a kink in it. But when I whipped it downward with my wrist, it felt perfect.)”

 

And Chapter 7, California – AD 500s. has another topic starting on page 270:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Bows and arrows were the single most complicated piece of technology in prehistoric times, incorporating nearly every material used by our ancestors – wood, stone, sinew, antler, resin, rope, feathers. And while atlatals long predated them, bows and arrows eventually replaced atlatals on nearly every continent. There are several reasons why.

 

The big advantage of atlatals is that their heavy darts pack quite a punch; you can really wallop game. But as megafauna went extinct on continent after continent, the importance of landing a big blow waned in tandem. Hunting smaller game requires stealth and precision, and bows and arrows allow you to hide in a blind and snipe at game instead of scaring them off with the big clumsy movement of an atlatl toss. You also stand still while shooting them, and can sight down an arrow and take aim, something that’s impossible with the side-armed atlatl. Arrows offer a superior rate of fire, too. With atlatals, you usually get one throw before an animal flees, but it’s possible to fire several arrows in quick succession. (Some Plains Indians could keep eight in the air at once). All in all, after the decline of the megafauna, arrows proved more superior in most hunting scenarios.

 

But as with all technological advances, the switch to bows and arrows was accompanied by social upheaval. For one thing, bows and arrows seemingly favored individuals over groups. When everyone used big, slow atlatals and got just one shot at game, hunting in groups was necessary to hedge bets. In contrast, the precision and stealth of bows and arrows encouraged solitary hunting. The group became less important.

 

Arrows might also have upended the relations between the sexes. Recall from Chapter 2 that women often throw atlatals better than men. Bows and arrows, however, tend to favor males. That’s partly because men are generally taller and generally have more upper body strength, bothof which provide an advantage when shooting bows. (Arm length and arm strength allow an archer to use a stiffer bow and pull the string back farther, generating more snap). That said, it wasn’t all biology; cultural factors favored males as well. However clumsy atlatals seem at first, people could master them reasonably quickly; children as young as seven can take down deer with them. Proficiency with arrows takes more practice; few children can reliably kill game with arrows until their mid-teens. And for whatever reason, most cultures in the ancient world – in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, in the Americas – denied young females the chance to develop this skill, shunting them off to gather plant food instead. As a result, bows and arrows became a male-dominated weapon.”

 

Images of an atlatl and bow hunter came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Gem paper clips have been around for a century and a quarter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did we fasten sheets of paper together before there were easy-to-use paper clips? We took a straight pin, poked a hole through them, arched the papers, and poked a second hole, as shown above. When handling those joined papers, you could easily puncture your skin with the pin point.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That changed after about 1900 when the Gem paper clip (five of which are shown above) appeared. There is a 1992 book by Henry Petroski titled The Evolution of Useful Things: How everyday artifacts – from forks and pins to paper clips and zippers – came to be as they are. A Gem clip even is shown on the book cover. (There also is an archived free e-book). His Chapter 4, starting on page 46 is titled From Pins to Paper Clips. On page 69 he says:

 

“The Gem paper clip seems to have had its real origin in Great Britain, and the name is said by one international firm to have been ‘derived from the original parent company, Gem Limited.’ This is supported by the Army and Navy Co-operative society’s 1907 catalogue of the ‘very best English goods,’ which pictures only one style of modern paper clip – a perfectly proportioned Gem, which is described as the ‘slide on’ paper clip that ‘will hold securely your letters, documents or memoranda without perforation or mutilation until you wish to release them,’ As early as 1908, the clip was being advertised in America as the ‘most popular clip’ and ‘the only satisfactory device for temporary attachment of papers. The ad copy went on to warn paper clip users against the use of other existing devices, whose shortcomings the Gem naturally did not share. ‘Don’t mutilate your papers with pins or fasteners.’

 

Even though the Gem itself never seems to have been patented in its classic form, nor to have been so perfectly functioning a paper clip that inventors did not try to improve upon it, it does appear to have long ago won the hearts and minds of designers and critics as the epitome of possible solutions to the design problems of fastening papers together….”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A figure caption on page 69 says:

 

“Although the 1899 patent [636,272 and shown above] issued to William Middlebrook of Waterbury, Connecticut was for a machine for making wire clips rather than for the clip design itself, Middlebrook’s drawings showed clearly (especially in his Fig. 8) that what came to be known as a Gem was being formed. This style of paper clip, which seems never to have been explicitly patented, came to be the standard to be improved upon. While functionally deficient as myriad other styles, its aesthetic qualities appear to have raised it to the status of artifactual icon.”   

 

A binder clip is a very useful office product invented eleven decades ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Wikipedia page for the binder clip. It also is discussed by Henry Petroski (February 6, 1942 to June 14, 2023) in his last, 2022 book titled Force: What it means to push and pull, slip and grip, start and stop. He was a professor of both civil engineering and history at Duke University. In Chapter 12, titled Stretching and Squeezing (about springs) on pages 151 to 153 he says:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Large lessons lie in small things. No matter what shape a paper clip may take, it is essentially a spring. The so-called binder clip keeps together sheaves of paper that are too thick for a regular bent-wire clip; the clever device was invented by a Washington, D.C., teenager named Louis E. Baltzley, who came from a family of inventors. His grandfather was Elias Howe, who is remembered for the sewing machine; his father and uncle also held patents. Young Louis, who would go on to invent small items including an easily picked up and stacked poker chip, a sifter top for powder containers, and a drinking glass holder for the side of a game table, wished to help his father, whose main occupation was writing, keep his manuscripts in order.

 

The binder gadget was patented in 1915 under the title ‘paper-binding clip,’ and throughout the subsequent century its appearance changed hardly at all from that shown in the drawings for Baltzley’s patent, attesting to the difficulty of improving upon it. Its basic element is a strip of spring steel formed into a shape resembling a pup tent. Two steel-wire handles bent into a keyhole shape fold over the tent sides to serve as levers by which to spread the top of the tent open wide enough to receive a sheaf of papers. When the handles are released on the spring-steel tent, which wants to assume its naturally closed configuration, it clamps down on the papers so firmly that they do not easily slip out.

 

Squeezing the shapely lever-handles of a binder clip between the thumb and index finger provides a strong sensation of the springiness. It is easy to open up at little gap but increasingly difficult to open up a wider one, just as Hooke’s law predicts. The clever design of the bent-wire handles enables the fingers to maintain their grip as they press with increasing force, which the user cannot help but feel. It is an ingenious device, and using it is an excellent way to feel the strong force of resistance that can come from even a small and compact device that looks nothing like a coil spring or the iconic Gem paper clip. It is also wonderfully adaptive. The handle loops allow the tightly clasped group of paper to be hung on a hook for ready access. When the handles are folded over onto the papers, they are out of the way for less visible storage. Alternately, the handles, which themselves are springs, can be manipulated to be removed entirely from the clip proper by squeezing their legs together sideways, and angling them out of the cleverly formed cylindrical recesses into which the edges of the clip terminate. By thus removing the handles from the clip or clips holding a set of papers together, a virtually permanent binding in book form can be achieved, with the backs of the clips forming a spine of sorts. In fact, a label could be affixed to the nearly flat back of a clip to identify what it holds.”

 

There is a broader discussion by Richard H. Moyer and Susan A. Everett in an article from EVERYDAY ENGINEERING on December 2011 (pages 16 to 21) titled Clips and Clamps.

 

An image of a binder clip holding a sheaf of papers was modified from Figure 3 of the patent 1,139,627.

 

 

Building low-cost lab equipment using LEGOs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting article by Diane N. Jung, Kailey E. Shara, and Carson J. Brunsat at PLoS One on August 12, 2025 titled LEGO as a versatile platform for building reconfigurable low-cost lab equipment. They discuss three creative examples, as is shown above in Figure 5 of that article. They are an orbital shaker, a syringe pump, and a microcentrifuge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pump shown in detail via Figure 1, which has a motor and gear drive that push to empty syringes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

A second is an orbital shaker, shown above in Figure 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third is a microcentrifuge, shown above in Figure 3, which has arms for holding spinning tubes.

 

There is a second article by Elizabeth Fernandez at the MIT Technology Review on June 25, 2024 titled Lego bricks are making science more accessible. It begins by showing a cell stretcher.

 

 

Great advice reframing why your story is worth telling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

There is a useful book from 2024 by Jami Attenberg titled 1000 Words: a writer’s guide to staying creative, focused, and productive all year round. On page 35, there is an essay about reframing titled Your Story Is Worth Telling (which you can find in a preview at Google Books):

 

“I have written one memoir, and before I began I had to ask myself, truly, if my story was worth telling. We all wonder sometimes if our story is worth telling. If it’s worth writing these 1000 words, let alone seventy thousand of them. I can’t tell you what the reader will think of your story, but I can suggest a reframing of your narrative of the writing of it.

 

Stop thinking of it as the story of you and instead start thinking of it as the story you have to tell. How can you, in the writing of it, make it interesting? What will your approach be that will make it feel different or special? Will it be an innovative structure? Will it be in the most gorgeous breathtaking language? Will it be in the timing of it all, where you sink emotional moment after emotional moment. Will it be written in a hooky, addictive, page-turning style? Will it be rich with captivating cliff-hangers? How can you tell it in a way that has never been told before? How can you write a wholly unique story?

 

Life is a series of moments, some bigger, some smaller, and that’s it. You can hang them together like forgotten Christmas lights left up year-round; or like beloved memorabilia secured on a refrigerator, maybe a postcard from long ago or a photo booth strip; or like flyers tacked to a community board in a café, advertising services or looking for lost dogs; or like signs promoting opposing local candidates stuck side by side in competition on neighbors’ front lawns; or like drying clothes pinned to a line, flapping in the wind beneath the sunshine. Your job is to arrange these moments into a beautiful or captivating or intriguing display.

 

Stop thinking of it as your life. Start thinking of it as a story. Your story will be interesting because of how you tell it.”

 

The Publio de Tommasi painting came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

An excellent story about being careful to solve the right problem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Design thinking is a set of cognitive, strategic, and practical procedures that designers use. I have been skimming a 2025 book by Fred Estes titled Design Thinking: a guide to innovation. There is an excellent story on pages 86 and 87 that you can read at Google Books:

 

“Case Study: The Town Pool

 

In one Scandinavian town, the community swimming pool had always been a hub of activity, and everyone enjoyed it. But in a brief span of time, attendance dropped sharply. The concerned town council jumped to the conclusion that the pool complex had become outdated and believed a new pool was the answer. They selected an architect and invited him to present design concepts for their multimillion-dollar vision.

 

Yet when the architect arrived at the council meeting, he didn’t bring intricate scale models of a proposed pool complex. Instead, he held up a single sheet of paper. The architect explained that he closely inspected the pool and then talked with the people in town, especially frequent swimmers. After these conversations, he realized an outdated pool wasn’t leading to poor attendance. The sheet he held up? The town’s bus schedule.

 

One of the town’s bus routes ran right by the pool, and most people rode the bus to the pool. But the town’s transportation department had recently changed the bus schedule so that the buses only ran along the route to the pool in midmornings and midafternoon. They dropped the early morning and later afternoon runs – the times when most of the daily swimmers went to the pool before or after work. The architect’s insight was simple – revert to the old bus timetable.

 

Taking his advice, the town saw pool attendance rebound to the previous levels and saved time and millions of tax dollars. This architect had done more than solve a problem. He made sure the town solved the real problem. The town learned the value of placing their ladder against the right wall.”

 

If the pool got outdated, then attendance should have gradually tapered off, and not dropped suddenly.  

 

The swimmer cartoon was adapted from an image at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Triumphs late in life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since I am a seasoned citizen, I enjoyed reading the 2024 book by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg titled Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs. Starting on page 182 there is a section titled Sam and Betsey Farber: A Gripping Story. After Sam sold Copco (which made enameled cast-iron cookware) he and Betsey retired and moved to France. Betsey decided to make an apple tart, but found peeling fruit with an old peeler upset her arthritis. 

 

She and Sam decided to produce hand tools that would be more comfortable. They worked with designer Patricia Moore and wound up using a thermoplastic elastomer called Santoprene to make tools like the green Oxo Good Grips peeler shown above. (Also see the 30 second YouTube video). There is an article about it by Mark Wilson at Fast Company on September 24, 2018 titled The untold story of the vegetable peeler that changed the world.

 

The book begins with a chapter on Fast-Food Legends that starts with a section titled Chicken: Harland David Sanders began his KFC empire at sixty-six. The fifth chapter, The Writers has a section beginning on page 89 titled Peter Mark Roget: Finding Just the Words about how he published his famous book of synonyms (a thesarus) at an age of seventy-three.

 

 An image of an older peeler design came from Wikimedia Commons

 

 

A book on creativity from Grant Snider - profusely illustrated by comics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Via interlibrary loan (from the Boise Public Library) I obtained and am extremely enjoying reading a thoughtful 2017 book with comics by Grant Snider titled The Shape of Ideas: An illustrated exploration of creativity. Grant is an orthodontist and an artist. He has a web site called Incidental Comics. The book cover has a hole shaped like a light bulb. And the book has ten sections with the following titles: 

 

INSPIRATION [Page 9]

PERSPIRATION [Page 22]

IMPROVISATION [Page 36]

ASPIRATION [Page 50]

CONTEMPLATION [Page 68]

EXPLORATION [Page 88]

DAILY FRUSTRATION [Page 102]

IMITATION [Page 114]

DESPERATION [Page 128]

PURE ELATION [Page 138]

 

Here are links to a dozen comics appearing in the book, as presented on web pages at his Incidental Comics site:

 

The perfect idea [page 12]

How to get ideas [page 23]

Mind game [page 47]

Paths to success [page 54]

A place for ideas [page 77]

Outside the box [pages 90 and 91]

Apartment living [page 96]

Creative blocks [page 105]

The art of living [page 119] also the title for his 2022 book

Chasing happiness [page 133]

My biggest fears [page 134]

Creative thinking [page 136 and 137]

 

His list for My Greatest Fears has the following fifteen, but public speaking isn’t one of them:

 

Dead birds

My student loan debt

The soul-stealing moon

Insomnia

Large Dogs

Blood cults

Cynicism

Heights

Hyperintelligent post-human dwarves

Taking the wrong bus

Unintentional plagiarism

Disembodied floating skulls

Hantavirus

Failure

Feral wolf-children

 

On September 19, 2024 I blogged about his 2022 book in a post titled A manifesto on what you should pay attention to – from a book on The Art of Living profusely illustrated by comic strips. And on September 28, 2024 I blogged about how In 2020 Grant Snider published a profusely illustrated book – I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf.

 

My big idea lightbulb was adapted from this image at Openclipart.