Welcome to 32nd edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter (Honora, A Better Mess), Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), and me!
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
This week we have thoughts on awareness, money over art, and living your life before it’s too late.
Michael on Awareness. There is no better 10 minutes you will spend this week. This video, which was created from a 2005 David Foster Wallace commencement speech is a bit of a gut punch. It encourages we all take a look look at the frustrating, unconscious, and unintentional way we move through many aspects of our lives. I can, and probably will, go on and on about why I love this video at some point. For now, I just really encourage you to go and watch it.
Iron Man Adds Appealing to Chinese Censors’ to List of Superpowers
Howie on Money over Art. I chose this because my friend Gini is a big Robert Downey Jr and Iron Man fan (from Gini: It’s true! I am!). While Hollywood claims art comes first, obviously money does or studios would not alter movies to please Chinese sensors. Some of the movies mentioned here and the changes made are pretty incredible. And all to be chosen as one of the 34 foreign movies China allows in theaters each year.
Mike Hughes Blogs through Cancer
Gini on Life. A few days ago, I wrote about the types of regrets people have when they die. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older or because many of my friends are splitting up their marriages or vacation just gave me some amazing perspective, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s truly important in life and how we should live our lives to the definition of our own success. This article adds fuel to my fire (thank you to Jennifer Devitt for making sure I saw it).
Mike Hughes is the president of The Martin Agency, one of the greatest ad agencies of all time. In this article, the author pulls together some of his best blog post, status updates, photos, and comments as he chronicles having been told he has only two weeks left to live. Amazing and incredibly poignant.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?