Do Interesting: Notice. Collect. Share. (Do Books Book 36)

the best people at that job are always the ones that can get interested in any problem, no matter how tedious it seems on the surface. They don’t get drawn to the obviously cool problems — sport, tech, fashion, purpose — they get stuck into things that seem a bit boring — insurance, infrastructure, finance, logistics — and they find what’s interest

Virginia Woolf described her ideal diary: I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously

Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.

There’s a certain magic in collecting your own set of secrets about the world.

The way to be interesting is to be interested. You’ve got to find what’s interesting in everything, you’ve got to be good at noticing things, you’ve got to be good at listening. If you find people (and things) interesting, they’ll find you interesting.

Pick a project you’ve always meant to do — or you’re right in the middle of — but which you find too daunting. Put enormous constraints around it. Like only giving yourself 20 minutes. Do it now.

Stay Curious How we created a world class event in a cowshed Clare Hieatt

What you want is a soft openness — to be attentive to the things you’re doing but not single-minded, because then you’re missing other opportunities.

Pick somewhere you go regularly. Find something you see all the time. Take a picture every time you pass by. Start to notice the changes. Do it 12 times.