Big Art & Exceptional Work ?? ?? ?? #42

Big Art.

I’ve had a great surprise this week: a bird’s eye view of a new, massive street art being painted and seeing focused artists Fintan Magee and Jason Parker. They’re painting in all kinds of weather, up and down and across in the cherrypicker (effortlessly working at heights) and their iPhones are getting workouts to check their plan. Seeing them write the original grid with numbers on the empty cement wall then filling in each section with such attention to the shading and colours has been so inspiring. Imagine doing a paint by numbers of this size, to this level of detail and with such success. Whoah! Talent!

Great to see they’re supported by Taubmans (I enjoyed reading links to street art and their history) with loads of paint rollers, brushes and sooo much paint.

If you’re in Melbourne, head down Little Bourke Street, just before Spencer, to see this and others painted. Otherwise, here are the photos as it comes to be (I plan to add photos to this link until the art is completed).

Thanks to Juddy Roller & crews for bringing this to be and to Sarah Moran for helping me track down the artists’ names.

Ease.

“Fin uses a combination of human and machine intelligence to provide high quality, on-demand assistance so you can focus on what is most important to you.”  Product Hunt newsletter.

Excellent! This great product video shows how Fin is clever.

Fin could save you time and give you more ease. It’s a great time to try it out as “Fin is waiving the $120 monthly minimum spend for the Product Hunt community — you can signup here to pay per request.”

Ross Hill first mentioned using Fin so you could get in touch with him.

Favourite Reads & Listens.

Once again Cal Newport (author of “Deep Work”) has me captivated. In “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” he shares his observations of the 3 core traits in people he’s interviewed that love doing exceptional work:

(1) Impact

Creativity (2)

(3) Control

He debunks the passion hypothesis (that you need to follow your passions to find work you love) and courage culture (that you need to be emotionally brave too) and instead highlights people who have developed their experience and skills (career capital) prior to using it for greater autonomy, income, flexibility and more.

These summarised notes are worth a scan if you’re not going to read the book (the Audible version is short & engaging).

It’s a fascinating time as always. I’m curious to see what happens with Facebook’s Messenger for Kids and will be looking on to see what the main character in this street art has in his left hand (will let you know)!

Haven’t yet mentioned anything about the Apple Watch 3 – after a couple of months I’m a fan!

That’s all from me for now. As always, shoot me a reply with topics you’d like to read – they add extra spark.

Have a wonderful time,

~ Sam

This is an extract from Runway Digital's 5 Dec, 2017 newsletter. Receive the latest issue in your inbox - sign up here.

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