Stefan Sagermeister: The Power of Time Off

Here’s another TED Talk worth checking out.

Once every seven years, Sagermeister will close down his design studio so he can take a one year sabbatical. During this time he’ll reflect on his business & life, pursue other interests, plan for the future, etc. Obviously, taking a year off isn’t for everyone, but I like the idea of taking time off (in smaller increments) for self-improvement.

My favorite quote:

“…we spend the first 25 years of our lives learning. Then there is another 40 years that’s really reserved for working. And then tacked on at the end of it are about 15 years for retirement. And I thought it might be helpful to basically cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them in between those working years.”

Chipotle + Jaime Oliver

I walked into Chipotle yesterday and found a stack of these small fliers at the cashier:

What an excellent, yet simple idea!! Dress up as “a horrifying processed food product” for Halloween and get basically any menu item for $2. It’s a nice tie-in with Halloween plus it benefits both the consumer and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Great way to raise money and awareness for an important cause.

LINK — Chipotle: Boorito

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution!

In this TED Talk, Robinson offers some nice observations about what’s wrong with the current education model and what can be done to change it. Here were the highlights for me (you can also watch the full video below).

Quotes:

“Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment. And it’s not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that’s simply improving a broken model. What we need — and the word’s been used many times during the course of the past few days — is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.”

“…human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.”

Two of the main problems with current education system:

1) Idea of linearity — “life is not linear, it’s organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us.”

2) Perception of college as the pinnacle of our education — “I think we are obsessed with getting people to college, certain sorts of college. I don’t mean you shouldn’t go to college, but not everybody needs to go, and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.”

Conclusion:

“We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”

LINK: Article about the video on HuffingtonPost.com