Well-Read Life™

Tell me what you hold dear

When I show friends our L-Tech fountain pen and stylus, I like to tell them that they’re holding three centuries of technology in their hand—the 19^th century fountain pen nib, the 20^th century machine-age brass barrel, and the 21^st century silicone stylus tip. Then I like to watch the smile that comes over their faces, as they think about what an old—and new—object they’re holding.

One object, three centuries

This three-century object manifests for me just how lucky we are to be able to tap into such a broad spectrum of technology. I love the feel of the fountain pen as it glides on my paper with the lubrication of liquid ink. In a quiet room, you can hear it, as well as feel it. (Charles Frazier, in his book Cold Mountain, described that sound as the scritch of the pen.) The ink glistens for a few seconds before it permeates the paper with its deep, dark blue.

Then I’ll cap the pen, flip it upside down, and use the stylus to draw on my favorite writing program, 51 Paper. I have a notebook therein where I practice writing, in Spanish, the expressions I read in English. It’s a modern and quite pleasing chalk slate. Bliss!

Now that we can enjoy fountains pens, ballpoints, and digital styli, why would we want to give any of them up?

In the era of virtual, still physical

It’s not just a matter of sentimentality; it speaks to our productivity. For connectivity, breaking news, and immediate communication, you can’t beat digital. But for communication with yourself, nothing beats the quiet pleasures of pen on paper—especially a pen perfectly suited to your hand and writing style, and paper, like an untouched field of fresh snow.

The digital—the virtual—will take us ever farther and higher into the cloud. It’s exciting to speculate on how we will work and create in ways we can’t yet imagine. Yet we are physical beings still, living in a physical world.

Consider the solidity of a strong wooden desk under your arms. It holds your computer ever so steady. Or the touch of a leather case that warmly and securely embraces your smartphone. It is carrying on the long tradition of using leather to give our fragile human bodies purchase on life—shoes, saddles, reins, quivers to hold our arrows.

Now that the heritage technologies we used to construct our civilization—like printed books, notebooks, and ink pens—are technically obsolete, we are free to truly understand their benefits and choose to use them when we desire.

A $100 gift card for the best stories of what you still hold dear

For my new book, Holding Dear: The Value of the Real, I was able to ask some of our customers about the physical object that inspires their thinking and creating. We’ve reproduced some wonderful—and surprising—stories by David McCullough, David Allen, Patti Smith, Ann Patchett and others. I especially liked our technologist friends Paul Saffo and Kevin Kelly weighing in on the analog objects of their affection.

But a book, in its paper iteration, has a finite number of pages, and we need to continue the conversation.

So I’m asking you to share a story with me. Tell me, dear reader, about a favorite box, or a certain painting, or a prized volume of poetry inscribed by a loved one that just wouldn’t be the same as a digital book, no more than a photo of people hugging substitutes for a real hug. Or whatever your object may be.

What thing, when you touch it, touches you back?

For the best stories (in our terribly subjective judgment) that we receive between now and May 19, a $100 Levenger gift card awaits. It’s good for acquiring other objects you hold dear.

Post your story as a Comment to this blog

Just click on the Comments link below with your story. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

We’ll notify the winners by email and announce them on our Facebook page. (Fyi—we may want to share your story in our social media or other Levenger communications channels.)

Gift card or not, each of you will be rewarded as you think back about what physical object you’re grateful for in our increasingly virtual world.

With thanks and gratitude to you, I am

Ever yours,

Steve

 

Best 12 tech gifts from Levenger, and why they’re doubly good

It’s the holidays, so forgive me as I swing into full Merchant Mode. But I just have to tell you why I’m excited about technology gifts from Levenger that give you more. We call them BOB-Tech, which is our shorthand for Best-of-Both Technologies: thoughtful marriages of high and heritage technology, where electronics come together with the venerable technologies of paper, pen or textile, to work smarter for you.

On the high tech side: the power to search, explore, share. On the heritage tech side: the invitation to reflect, immerse, contemplate. As important as it is to connect and be social, it’s also vital to disconnect and be personal. We use our brains best when we do both. This is the digital life that Levenger is committed to bringing you.

So here are my favorite BOB-Tech gifts that I think will help bring out the best in you and your loved ones:

A stylus fit for pen connoisseurs. The result of a year of serious R&D gave birth to our hefty L-Tech stylus pen. It plays both ends of the digital domain beautifully. One end is a replaceable stylus for your tablet or iPhone. The other is a fine writing instrument of your choice—fountain pen, rollerball or the smaller, sleeker, yet still weighty ballpoint.

Passport and iPhone 5 at the ready. Customers have pinned 5 stars on our Pocket Briefcases with their 3x5 note cards since the last century. Our new International Phone-Pocket version holds an iPhone 5 (and earlier models), a passport, plus those ever-handy cards for instant hard copy.

Lab book meets iPad, in leather. In this luscious folio, the familiar composition/laboratory notebook gets a high-Q facelift with archival-quality paper that’s sewn in for greater durability. In the accordion pouch goes your iPad, Nook or Kindle.

Bomber Jacket mission: shield your iPad. Rugged Bomber Jacket leather means plenty of pleasing padding for your iPad, plus room for a small notepad.

See, scroll, write: eyeglasses, smartphone, pen. Our Blink & Ink Phone Holder holds all three of these important, often interdependent, tools. (And yes, the iPhone 5 fits.)

The case for a larger phone case (to fit some notes, of course). The iPhone 5 fits here as well, with room to spare for some 3x5 note cards and pen. The Bomber Jacket leather is a customer favorite.

iPad in a pocket. This pocket being our popular Pocquettes protective case. Santa’s elf has tucked an earbud holder inside.

Free to write on paper and work on iPad. Do them side by side in our Freeleaf folio, which works for right hand or left.

Circa and iPad: two icons of BOB-Tech, together at last. Circa, our award-winning note-taking system, is the physical embodiment of the virtual: eminently flexible and movable, amazingly changeable and rearrangeable. It has the brain of pixels and the soul of paper. Pair it with your iPad and productivity wins.

Where to park your minis. Whether it’s the iPad Mini, Kindle, Kobo or Nook, park it on our teeny-tiny Thai Pad. The design harks back centuries, and it’s made by hand by Thai village women. For their big brothers, get the full-size Thai Pad.

How to hug an iPad. Snuggle it in one of our soft bookrest pillows, the Bouclé iPad Pillow or the India Cloud Kantha Pillow.

The 16th-century GPS.  How do you map the world even though you can’t see it from above? Witness the extraordinary technology that resulted in the first map to name America as well as the first nautical map of the world. Both maps were created by hand, using woodblocks, but it’s thanks to high-resolution digitizing and hyperspectral images that we can experience it. Not available as an e-book, and when you hold this beautiful book, you’ll see why. It’s the heritage view of Seeing the World Anew.

Tell me, dear reader: are you a devotee of Best-of-Both Technology? How does BOB-Tech work for you? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Kate DiCamillo’s mouse that soared

When author Kate DiCamillo addressed the American Booksellers Association’s award luncheon a couple years ago, I was smitten. Few authors speak as powerfully in person as on the page, and Kate is one of them. She told of how, as a young girl, she discovered books in her town’s small local bookstore, and how it changed her life forever.

Years later, Kate DiCamillo would change the lives of countless young readers herself. She did it with the help of a very small mouse.

The Tale of Despereaux is the book that not only won the most prestigious award given to children’s books—the Newbery Medal—but also gave to children and adults a story that will likely endure alongside those from Hans Christian Andersen, A. A. Milne  and E. B. White. Despereaux, you see, is a little mouse with the big ears and bigger heart who is desperate to save a princess.

Despereaux went Hollywood several years ago, with a full-length feature film from Universal Studios. In 2012, Kate and Levenger conspired to bring him into 3D as a bookend. And this bookend itself tells a story.

Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison spoke with Kate about Despereaux’s morphing from an idea in her head to an object on her shelf. Here’s their conversation: 

Levenger Press: What has it been like to have a two-dimensional mouse made into a three-dimensional bookend?

Kate DiCamillo: It is an odd and humbling thing to sit alone in a dark room in the early hours of morning and try to imagine your way into the heart and soul of a (smaller-than-average) mouse, and then to watch him come to life in so many different ways. It truly seems like a dream to me.

LP: How is it different from seeing him being made into an animated film?

Kate: There is something wonderful about being able to reach out and actually touch the top of Despereaux's head. It was grand to see him up on the screen. And it is comforting to think about having him on my bookshelf.

LP: When you’re first creating the characters for your books in your head, do you see them in 3-D?

Kate: I do!  They are whole, complete, multi-dimensional, complicated and confounding in my mind.

LP: Despereaux is a children’s book—the recipient of the Newbery Medal for children’s literature, in fact—and yet you use grown-up words like coda in it. How do you write to appeal equally to children and adults?

Kate: I just work on trying to tell the story in the best way I am able. That is, I try to get out of my own way and let the story tell me what to do.

LP: For readers who haven’t read Despereaux (cripes, as Despereaux’s brother might say), what would you want to tell them about why there’s a spool of red thread on the bookend?

Kate: Something like this: that red thread is there to remind us all that there is a way through our troubles.

LP: Your message on the bottom of the bookend says, “Reader, I hope you found some light here.” What did you mean by that?

Kate: Stories are light to me. To read a story comforts me. To tell a story comforts me. The reading and the telling both illuminate. And that is a grand, grand thing.

And now to you, dear reader: what was the book where, as a youngster, you found light and comfort? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Have yourself a Google-less Christmas

Have you ever wanted to Google something and not done it just to see if you could remember? Recently I couldn’t remember the name of a famous actor. I’d even read his memoir, which I could visualize: on the white dust jacket was his black silhouette ambling away with a cane. The title of the book (ironically) was My Name Escapes Me, and he starred in that famous movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. I was frustrated with myself, feeling my brain going to mush, so I refused to pick up my phone or ask anyone. I believed I would remember with enough attempts and decided to let my brain struggle. Three or four times I thought on it.

Then, on the morning of the third day, after my first cup of coffee, it suddenly snapped in—Alec Guinness! Reflexively I seized the dome of my head with my right hand and beamed my biggest smile. It felt so good!

Will the neuroscientists in the room please explain this?

Don’t we all delight in the ease we now have to find facts? Yet does this also give us a renewed appreciation for how good it can feel when you make your mind do its own internal search?

Likewise, mobile, virtual gaming is exploding in popularity. An estimated xxxx million people (I would tell you how many, but I’d have to Google it) the world over now play mobile games, mainly by tapping the tips of their fingers on small glass screens. There’s no arguing how captivating these games can be, yet should they also give us a renewed appreciation for how good it can feel to play with our full hands as we manipulate real, three-dimensional objects?

We believe so.

That’s why here at Levenger we’ve been elfishly busy all year developing this season’s harvest of heritage gaming technology to delight your senses.

They are designed to connect mind and hand, and to activate connections between generations. Go ahead and Google, but not all the time. Play, also, with your full human, physical powers to connect with your loved ones, and yourself.

I love our Shut the Box,  Game Room in a Box, Domino-a-Go-Go  and Solitaire Times Two for the warm wood they put in your hand. The same is true of the Mancala game, which I also like because of its ancient origins that still connect us after all these years.

Even our puzzles—one of a Churchill painting, the other of a 14^th-century illuminated manuscript—are all wood, with the images created on archival paper.

I’d like to be like the Ghost of Christmas Present, invisibly watching generations old and young as they banter and tease and guess the answers in our Dickens Christmas Carol board game. (If you want a not-so-unfair advantage, read this edition of the book first. Some of the multiple-choice answers are found in the introduction…and would be hard to find even on Google.)

After hearing David McCullough say that he doesn’t write histories or biographies but rather, he tells a story, I want to better appreciate the storyteller’s craft. So I’m going to try out my storytelling skills using our Scheherazade Storytelling Game.

Tell me, dear reader, have you recently decided not to Google? Can you share a story of renewed appreciation for your full human capabilities? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Feliz Noël

Do you want to learn another language?

As some of you faithful readers know, for nearly five years now I’ve been studying Spanish. I’ve progressed from setting my iPhone and ATM to Spanish to actually conversing with my tutor.

And just recently, I’ve found myself having to grope for a word in English—a reach that sometimes, startlingly, eludes my grasp. Fortunately, my brain’s synapses are not misfiring (at least, not over this). Some scientists now report that for bilingual speakers, both languages keep up a lively buzz in the brain. Where once there was one, now there are dos.

It turns out that all that buzzing is good for you: it gives your cognitive muscles a workout. And though it seems counterintuitive, given that bilingual speakers are more acutely aware of what’s going on around them, bilingualism helps your brain stay focused and better resist distractions.

Muy bueno.

Multilingual learning, anyone?

I doubt that I will ever seriously venture beyond Spanish…and yet. Languages exert a force-field attraction. Language begets other languages—at the very least, an interest in them.

This holiday, then, if you shop around Levenger for brain boosters of a bilingual nature, you’ll find quite a number of languages ready to tease you and teach you and, we hope, please you.

Our popular Crossword Picante Spanish-English crosswords game, which sold out last year, is back, and this year we’ve added a French-English version, Crossword Santé. Since the games are set up so that you can spell a word in either language, proficiency is not a requisite. We also encourage players to use dictionaries. ¿Por que no?

We learned a lot while developing our Multilingual Learning Blocks. Each block spells the same word in six languages: Mandarin, French, German, Spanish, Latin and English.

We gave each language its own color and design. And how did we choose which six languages? We put on our research hats and selected those languages most commonly taught in American schools today. (Latin? A pleasant surprise.)

Next, how to choose the words? We turned to our friends at the Long Now Foundation, who spearhead The Rosetta Project, a critically important effort to preserve the world’s endangered languages.

Laura Welcher of The Rosetta Project turned us on to the Swadesh List, named after the linguist who compiled the most commonly used words across different languages. We then winnowed the list to 28 words whose meaning in English was limited to one definition.

I find it fascinating to turn these blocks in your fingers to see not just how different the words can be from one language to the next, but how similar some of them are. It made me rethink the idea that Latin is a dead language when I saw cor (heart) beating strongly in the Spanish corazón and the French coeur (and in the English coronary).

The price for these multi-language blocks is higher than the single-language blocks we offer (Chinese,  Hebrew,  Greek), but there’s good reason: they’re a custom-made set, made just for Levenger customers.

A written language with no alphabet

One of the many languages UNESCO has marked as endangered is Cherokee. We were intrigued by these Cherokee language blocks because the written Cherokee language has no equivalent of our A, B, Cs. Instead of an alphabet, Cherokee has a syllabary.

These are characters that represent syllables, and a Cherokee named Sequoyah created them in the early 1800s. Until then Cherokee, like most world languages, was not written but oral. Sequoyah recognized that having a written syllabary would give the Cherokee a chance to communicate through writing. They called their syllabary “talking leaves.”

How to learn 10 languages as easily as uno, due, très

For a fast and fun survey course of ten languages—Arabic, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish—pocket a pouch of our ten-sided dice, each one with 1 to 10 in one of ten languages. It comes with a cheat sheet of simple phonetics (compiled with the help of native speakers), while listing the spelling of each number in the language. Seeing these spellings side by side helps to show the similarities among several of the languages.

The number six in English is the Danish seks, German sechs, Swedish sex, French six, Portuguese and Spanish seis, Italian sei. The same ribbon of familiarity runs through the word for nine: ni, neun, nio, neuf, nove, nueve, nove.

H’mmm. Maybe multilingualism isn’t as daunting as I thought.

How admiring I am of people who are fluent in three, four, and more languages—people like Steve Kaufmann, who helps so many others learn. How lucky they are—just imagine how toned their cognitive muscles are.

Are you one of them, dear reader? Or is there another language you’d like to learn? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Meantime, if you’d like to read a couple interesting pieces on benefits of bilingualism, try these:

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/04/135043787/being-bilingual-may-boost-your-brain-power

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html

Made On Planet Earth

I’m proud to say that at Levenger, we source our products in America—and from all over the globe, including China. We pride ourselves at finding the best-quality manufacturers of our goods no matter where they may be, with the same blind justice as the Olympics: let the best competitor win. We feel a deep obligation to make the best Levenger products we can—in quality, sustainability, and price—and pass that value to our customers.

I also believe that, in general, the more nations trade, the less they fight. It’s bad business to kill customers.

Of course, exceptions have been made. Nations have gone to war against countries they trade with. Citizens have punished neighbors who provide valuable economic services. Yet by and large, nations and citizens behave in their economic interests. This is one reason why capitalism can be such a powerful force for good.

We source most of our leather goods in China because the Chinese make most of the world’s best leather goods. I’ve toured numerous Chinese leather factories and can assure you that many of the bags sold on Via Spiga, Bond Street, Madison Avenue and Rodeo Drive begin their careers in China. And this is a good thing.

The Chinese for decades have invested in the leather industry for both low-end and high-end goods. They have trained a vast labor pool of skilled workers required for the labor-intensive work that fine leather goods require. Owners and workers have benefited. In the twenty years I’ve been traveling to China, I’ve seen the parking lots jammed full of bicycles transform into lots full of motor scooters and cars. I’ve seen their factories add amenities (including libraries and computer learning centers) as they compete for skilled employees. I’ve seen the employees gain weight, which perhaps isn’t healthy for them, but nevertheless marks their improving wealth.

In the early years, we stayed at Spartan factory dorms. These days, factory owners drive us with pride to luxury Hyatt Hotels, where Audis and Land Rovers owned by Chinese executives are parked outside.

The Chinese have the infrastructure (tanneries, equipment suppliers, hardware) to support the quick sampling and rapid scaling of production that our fast-paced world demands.

I’m all for more highly skilled jobs in America that require education, creativity and hard work—all things that Americans are eminently capable of. American business executives have to play to our strengths, including innovation, entrepreneurism, and an understanding that doing the right thing can be profitable. A growing number of major firms are embracing this latter philosophy, which is one of the cornerstones of Conscious Capitalism.

But let’s not kid ourselves that protectionist trade policies will have any long-term beneficial effect for us or for our trading partners. Isolation breeds alienation. The world is too small to be alone in anymore. We’ll excel as a nation as we always have—the old-fashioned way, with our smarts and hard work.

I’m seeing promising things.

Our American leather partner in western Massachusetts has more automation than most Chinese factories—for example, automated folding machines that yield higher-quality products faster.

Our American printing partner in Maine links to us with a network of computers so that the moment you press the order button on Levenger.com, a digital printing press in Maine begins to make your custom creation. Then, through plain New England hustle, the sons and daughters of Maine fishermen pack and ship those orders the same day they are produced.

For a wonderful historical perspective on trade, I recommend The Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by William J. Bernstein. I quote from his summary:

World trade has yielded not only a bounty of material goods, but also of intellectual and cultural capital, an understanding of our neighbors, and a desire to sell things to others rather than annihilate them.

 For an uplifting look at the general decline in world violence and the contributing role of capitalism, I highly recommend Steven Pinker’s meticulously researched and beautifully written The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

And now, come take an around-the-world trip to the origins of Levenger products. I’ve asked Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison to act as our tour guide:

Wicked good leather goods from Massachusetts. Pick up some of our embossed leatherware and know that while the leather comes from Italy, the crafting of it is done in the Bay State.

London, France, China and the world…by way of Wisconsin. Levenger Press may be the only publisher in America to have a book on China that was printed in America. We’re proud to say that nearly all Levenger Press books are printed by Worzalla, an employee-owned Master Printer in Wisconsin.

Our newest book with Worzalla, Seeing the World Anew, tells the story of a 16^th-century mapmaker from France who created two world maps that signaled a radically new world view.

For the book’s presentation at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in September, Rodger Beyer from Worzalla joined Levenger in cheering on the authors.

And Dickens may have penned his Christmas Carol in London, but the only true facsimile of his furiously scrawled pages was printed in America.

Mandarin from Michigan. We recently designed a set of Multilingual Learning Blocks that feature words in six different languages, including Mandarin. A family-owned company in Michigan hand-manufactured the blocks from replenishable local basswood. We worked with another U.S. organization, the Long Now Foundation, in selecting the languages and the words. 

Microbrew from Jersey. That would be our microbrewed Levenger Bottled Ink, and the secret recipe is known to only a few at a secret plant in New Jersey. 

Well-dotted i’s from Iowa. If you’ve written with a flourish with our Signature Stub Nib, you’ve gotten a feel for Iowa craftsmanship. That’s where the nibs are ground—by hand, by a master.

Mile-high Churchill. An original painting by Sir Winston Churchill goes for sky-high prices. Come to Levenger and you can get a laser-cut wooden puzzle featuring one of the few paintings to feature his initials. It’s crafted by a precision puzzler in Colorado.

Down-East on demand. Our Circa print-on-demand notebooks and our personalized 3 x 5 cards are made in Maine. The natives there have been paper makers almost as long as they’ve been bankers (as in fishermen who ply the Grand Banks).

Barristers heart New York. They are the real deal: the barrister bookcases with the glass fronts that you pull out and slide back in the best Atticus Finch tradition. Levenger Barrister Bookcases are manufactured in the best small-town-America tradition, in Herkimer, New York, by a company that’s been making them for more than a century.

Cabinets from the Keystone State. Our Lateral and Stackable File Cabinets  come from Pennsylvania and are made from solid cherry, oak or walnut.

Byron does the Big Easy. Our Shirt Pocket Poetry is pouched and packaged in New Orleans. And the cards? They’ve made in Memphis, the same city where you’ll find our customer service center. (Steve is partial to the fried pickles there.)

Amish country. From Indiana comes the Book Snug desk-size book holder that Amish craftsmen there make for us. As is their custom, they do not wish to have their faces photographed. But they did allow us to show you some photos of their hand work, which you can see on the link.

Americas the beautiful. From Argentina comes some of the leather we use; from Chile, some of the pulp for the paper our Taiwanese manufacturer makes. From Haiti come iPad sleeves hand-quilted by women under the wing of an American humanitarian group, whom we hooked up with by way of Martha’s Vineyard. Indeed, it is a small world after all.

Oh, to be from England. That’s where all our Tusting leather bags are from. They’re made in the True Brit tradition of a small, family-run manufactory that’s been turning out quality for generations. England is also where our Bodleian Bilingual Bags for books comes from, and you can’t get much more British than that. 

Do the Continental. The paper in the Rhodia notebooks we offer comes from France. (The notebooks are actually printed and bound in Buffalo, New York.) From the land of IKEA come Whitelines, the notebooks from Sweden. We look to Germany for our pen nibs and Italy for both pens and some leather. And like Marco Polo, we look farther East for additional craftsmanship.

Silk Road, Levenger-style. Our Thai Pad is handmade in Thailand from silk. From artisans in India come the India Cloud Kantha Book Pillow. From Korea comes leather; Malaysia, paper; Japan, the resin for our Kyoto pen. And In Taiwan and mainland China we work with artisans, entrepreneurs and factories to produce a number of our paper and leather products, as well as deskware. 

If Levenger had a manufacturing map app, you’d find us—well, all over the map. But only where there are people with a like-minded passion for quality. That makes it a small world after all.

 

And now to you, dear reader: have you bought something recently based on where it was made? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Jennifer Lee goes to the (yoga) mat for right-brain business plans

Meet Jennifer in the delightful live chat we had October 23: http://www.rightbrainbusinessplan.com/2012/10/23/livestream-interview-with-levenger-ceo-steve-leveen/

Don’t tell my finance group, but I no longer feel quite so deficient for not taking accounting courses when Lori and I became entrepreneurs. I have Jennifer Lee to thank.

A graduate of UCLA and USC, Jennifer runs a successful professional-coaching company in the San Francisco Bay area. She’s developed a right-brain method of business planning that’s clicked with many entrepreneurs. First she captured all her ideas in a book, The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success.  Now she’s distilled the essence of her approach in our Circa notebooks.   

One of Jennifer’s clients saw a 37 percent increase in growth in year one of thinking Right Brain Business Plan, and a 50 percent spike in year two. Another client went from being employee to entrepreneur with no drop in pay the first year. That client routinely revisits her Right Brain Business Plan to keep refueling her plans.

It sounds counterintuitive, right brain and business plan. The right brain is supposed to be expansive and creative, not the place where you’ll find analytical thinking lurking. But Jennifer gets you thinking in pictures, with a result that’s both painless and productive.

I confess: Levenger has followed a linear, left-brain, bullet point and spreadsheet method of planning. But now that Jennifer is among our Circa Thought Leaders, we may have to rethink that.

It’s my pleasure to introduce Jennifer to you by way of this conversation with Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison, as the two discuss right brains, paper…and the value of taking a deep breath.

Levenger: How does a visual business plan help in developing a viable one?

Jennifer: A visual plan helps to communicate an idea beyond words. The images, colors and symbols quickly and intuitively get to the essence of the vision and goals. And because visuals appeal more to our emotions, the plan can be more impactful and inspiring.

Levenger: Not all right-brainers are artists. Will your approach still work for them?

Jennifer:  If you can tear images from magazines and use a glue stick, or write with colorful markers on sticky notes, you can benefit from this way of planning. I believe that everyone is creative, and it’s about using whatever medium or form of expression that speaks to you. The most important thing is that your plan is meaningful to you and that it inspires action.

Levenger: You recommend using a bulletin board to help in identifying markets and trends—and you mean a physical bulletin board. There’s a strong element of physicality to your method: index cards, magazine pages, sticky notes. Why does physical paper still matter?

Jennifer: Physical paper helps makes our ideas tangible. It gets us out of our heads and lets us work with our hands to bring our thoughts to life. We can easily move index cards or sticky notes around to find patterns, group similar concepts, and prioritize.  They allow us to interact with our musing in the material world.

Levenger: Instead of a financial spreadsheet, you advocate a Moola Map. Instead of a networking list, you talk about Creative Cohorts. Rather than an executive summary, you recommend Hearty Highlights. How does such playful language help in designing a plan?

Jennifer: For some of us creative types, our brains tune out when we hear something too traditional or boring. Some classic business terms even sound war-like (competitive advantage, tactics, deadlines, execution) and can conjure up negative associations. If we want to make planning more engaging and, dare we say, fun, then it helps to use phrases that are more relatable and disarming—with a bit of whimsy thrown in to spark the creative spirit.

Levenger: Your not-so-secret secret is that you were once part of corporate America. Does it help to have this left-brain training before embarking on a business plan based on right-brain thinking?

Jennifer: It’s true, I did spend some time (about a decade) in corporate America and I do believe that experience has influenced how I plan. Even though I have this background—and it has certainly come in handy at times—I don’t think it’s a requirement for doing a business plan based on right-brain thinking. And for some people, it could hinder their creative process to be too concerned with following a step-by-step process. The key is to stay connected with what’s most important to you and your business.

Levenger: You’re a yogini. What exactly does that mean?

Jennifer: A yogini is a woman who practices yoga. I’m certified in Ashtanga yoga, and I love the way the practice grounds me and connects my mind, body, and spirit.  I haven’t been doing the physical asanas (poses/exercises) as much as I’d like now due to an injury, but that just encourages me to practice the principles of yoga “off the mat” instead. For instance, bringing as much awareness into the present moment as I can (a tough one for a busy entrepreneur, but much needed, too!), finding balance, slowing down, letting go of judgments and expectations—and remembering to breathe.

Levenger:  Do you see a connection between the contemplative nature of yoga and the contemplative power of paper?

Jennifer: Actually, yes, I can see a parallel between the two. In our fast-paced digital world, the next bright, shiny object can easily distract us. But both the practice of yoga and the act of writing by hand on paper can be grounding forces in our daily lives and can help us connect more consciously to our creative flow.

With yoga, when you align your physical movement with your breath, you help to calm your mind and take in the present moment more deeply.

When you write on paper, you can focus more intently on what’s right in front of you rather than be tempted to multi-task on-screen. You become more aware of your senses: the feel of the pen gliding across the page, the smell of ink, or the satisfaction of flipping the page to continue a thought.

In a way, practicing yoga and writing on paper can both be forms of a moving meditation.

Now to you, dear reader: have you ever considered yourself a right-brain thinker trapped in a left-brain world? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

The whole earth, ca. 1507

If you’re a boomer like me, you may remember that high-octane java jolt when you first encountered the cover of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog from 1968. There was Earth, seen from the unearthly prospect of space, a vantage point never seen before. It was a whole new way of looking at the world. 

When I look at the two Renaissance maps we’ve just published, I wonder if those who encountered them back in the sixteenth century had a comparable shock. Because clearly, the world would never be seen in quite the same way.

The maps are two of the treasures in the Library of Congress, which was our partner in this publishing project.

The creator of the maps, a German humanist living in France named Martin Waldseemüller, is someone most of us haven’t heard of. And yet his 1507 map was the first to put the name AMERICA on a map. Even more radically, the map showed an ocean to the west of North and South America, where one had never been placed before.

His 1516 map is called the Carta marina, or “Sea chart.” It draws liberally on iconography to demonstrate that no longer would world views be guided by the guesswork of the second-century Greek cartographer Ptolemy, as all maps up to this point had been. Instead, Waldseemüller took his cues from someone who’d actually been there: Christopher Columbus.

The title of our book is Seeing the World Anew. What strikes me when I read the captivating text by John Hessler and Chet Van Duzer is how similar a time to Waldseemüller’s we now live in. It’s a much different world from 1507, of course, but comparable upheavals of the status quo and radical shifts in knowledge are taking place. Things that seemed immutable in a pre-digital world are no longer. In an era of GPS and Google maps, the creased paper map in the glove compartment from 2002 seems almost as ancient as Ptolemy.

The editor of Levenger Press, Mim Harrison, worked along with John and Chet on the making of Seeing the World Anew. Both men are cartographic scholars, and each is the authority on the map he wrote about—John on the 1507, Chet on the 1516. I asked Mim to share some of their ongoing dialogue about how Waldseemüller was able to see the world as he did.

John (L) and Chet presenting their book at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.

Levenger Press: John, you’d mentioned early in our conversations that what the 1507 World Map said about the world was the modern-day equivalent of being told there was human life on Mars. Was it because Waldseemüller showed North and South America as having an ocean on their western coasts?

John Hessler: I was really looking for a dramatic way to describe what was, essentially, a geographic revolution. The discovery of the New World, just a few years before Waldseemüller’s great map, was an event that changed the way the Old World perceived itself. It was a revolution not only of information but also of identity. No longer were the people of Europe, who of course this had the most effect on, alone. No longer did they have a special place. Waldseemüller uses both new and old information, and I think he is trying to draw a deep contrast between the geography of the ancient world as embodied by Ptolemy and that of the new discoveries. He is really trying to graphically portrait radical change.

LP: And yet nine years later, Waldseemüller essentially backpedaled on the Carta marina and did away with that western ocean. Why would he have abandoned this knowledge?

Chet Van Duzer: Two factors need to be taken into account in considering the absence of a western ocean on the Carta marina. First, in that map, Waldseemüller adopts Columbus’s view of the newly discovered lands, which is that it was part of Asia. We can see this clearly in a legend in North America, which labels that area “Land of Cuba, part of Asia.” If the newly discovered lands are part of Asia, there is no ocean between those lands and Asia. Second, in the Carta marina Waldseemüller has created a more practical map that shows the areas of the world where Europeans sailed, and where trade was conducted. Hence the long list of trade goods available in India in the lower right corner of the map. Waldseemüller’s focus on creating a more practical image of the world in the Carta marina also likely played a role in his omitting speculation about a western ocean on the map.

LP: Waldseemüller radically changed the history of how we saw the world. Why is it, then, that most of us never read of Waldseemüller in our history books?

John: One of the most exciting things about Waldseemüller’s maps is that they were very understudied as few as fifteen years ago. Almost all of the modern scholarship that has been produced on the maps has come in that time period, and we are still making new discoveries about the maps even now. There are many things that for one reason or another become canonic stories in our history, some of which are very difficult to overcome. History as a series of real acts is very complicated; the writing of it must simplify and select.

Chet: Large wall maps do not survive well over the centuries. In the case of the 1507 and 1516 maps, if copies of the maps were glued to walls like wallpaper, which is probably what Waldseemüller intended, they were destroyed during renovations. Even if they are not glued to anything, the large sheets are difficult to store, which means that they are more readily discarded. The fact that no copies of the maps were known for many years prior to the discovery in 1901 of the copies now in the Library of Congress means that these two maps were unavailable for study during the nineteenth century. I hope that Seeing the World Anew, together with the increasing scholarly and public interest in maps, will do something to make “Waldseemüller” more of a household name.

LP: One thing that’s striking on the Carta marina is the iconography that you describe so vividly in the book, and some of it is the stuff of science fiction. Doesn’t it seem ironic that this rational, scientific thinker would also believe that in certain parts of the world, there were human creatures who just inhaled the aroma of apples for sustenance and never actually ate?

Chet: Waldseemüller was dependent on the sources available to him. He made less use of Marco Polo on his 1516 map than he had on his 1507 map, perhaps because in part because he had decided that Polo was not entirely reliable. Also, he had access to accounts by more recent travelers and geographers. The information about the “monstrous races” of India that he used on the Carta marina came from Pierre d’Ailly’s Ymago mundi, which was written in about 1410, and published in the 1480s. So this information would have seemed relatively recent. It is also possible that Waldseemüller thought that the curious images of the “monstrous races” of men would help sell copies of the Carta marina.

LP: John, in your spare time, you’re an alpinist, and you’ve said that “there has always been something about a mountain that makes it appear mappable.” Waldseemüller essentially lived tucked away in the mountains in northern France. Do you think these inspired him?

John:  Our fascination with mountains and their beauty is a very modern invention. It’s most likely that in Waldseemüller’s time, these places were to be avoided. Waldseemüller did produce a map of his home region, which shows the mountains of the Vosges quite clearly. But if you look at that map closely, or at any of his other maps for that matter, there is really nothing shown happening in the mountains. It’s as if for people of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, there was really no geography going on in these places to speak of.

LP: For those of us who are new to appreciating old maps, how should we look at them in order to best enjoy them?

Chet: In making world maps during the Middle Ages or Renaissance, cartographers had much less information at their disposal than modern cartographers do. Thus, these maps contain more in the way of speculation, guesses and extrapolation, and from the cartographers themselves, more about their assumptions, cultural influences and learning. I personally enjoy looking at the  use of sources for clues about the cartographer’s character. But it is also important to mention the aesthetic qualities of maps: it is exhilarating to see the whole world at a glance, and also to be able to explore the details so easily, merely by shifting one’s eyes, without the burdens of travel. And the Waldseemüller maps are works of high art, both in their design and in the expression of that design by the cutters of the woodblocks from which the sheets were printed, that abundantly repay study.

John:  I think one must try, as best as one can (even though for historians this is pure fantasy), to put oneself in the place being mapped. Attempt to look at the conjunction between the actual landscape being mapped and the mapmaker himself, and for just a moment, try to grasp how difficult it must have been to make a map, to construct it accurately, before it was possible to get above the surface of the earth and look at it from above. Even though I have been involved with cartography, either as a mapmaker or historian for most of my adult life, I still marvel at the skill and geometric insights these early mapmakers drew from such limited information. I still wonder about what has been called the hidden fourth dimension of cartography, where the mapmaker’s mind interacts with a place, and forms a graphic and symbolic image that others can understand.

And now to you, dear reader: What has happened in your lifetime to make you see the world differently? I'd love to hear about your java-jolt moment. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you're reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments.)

15 Minutes to a More Creative You

Frankly, I was skeptical. Partly because I’ve always preferred an open sheet of paper when allowing my mind to wander, hoping to go outside the usual boxes of my thoughts in order to be creative. So my eyebrows arched when I spied Todd Henry’s structured-looking layout of shaded boxes with words like “nutshell” and “assumption” and little letters and numbers. It looks vaguely like an ancient Hopi Indian pattern. But I wanted to give him a fair test, so I read not his book, but just the short instructions that come with our new Circa Idea Book. In other words, I did just what customers would do if they were adventurous enough try this unusual new page layout. I grasped one of my favorite fine-point pens, slowed down to print my neatest, and gave it a go.  

Fifteen minutes later, I was amazed. I had written as the challenge in the center box Levenger launching a case for Apple’s rumored mini iPad (which, in our best-of-both technologies designs, would also hold paper) and have it ready for the holidays—a record development time for us. Working by Todd’s methods, I discovered that, ironically, we would have to slow way down (on some things) if we wanted to move at light speed here. But it could be done. The exercise gave me confidence to float this concept to our team, and they grasped the torch and ran it ahead. You’ll see the result soon.

So read below the interview of my new creativity guru, Todd Henry, as he spoke with Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison: 

Levenger: Is there really such a thing as creativity on demand?

Todd Henry: There is no formula for creativity, and there’s no “magic bullet” that will ensure great ideas when you need them. There are, however, practices that can better position you to have the energy, focus, and time you need to zero in on a problem effectively, and to be able to recognize a great idea when it appears. The punch line of the book is that if you want to be brilliant at a moment’s notice, you need to begin far upstream from the moment you need a brilliant idea. My goal is to help people experience more frequent moments of serendipity because they’ve instilled purposeful structure around their creative process.

Levenger: You have a three-part formula for creativity: prolific + brilliant + healthy. Many of us would say it’s easier to be healthy than prolific and brilliant.

Todd: I think it depends on your organization. There is an expectation in many companies that you will be prolific and brilliant, regardless of what it costs you. My argument is that this is not a sustainable way to exist as a creative professional, and that if you ignore the healthy piece of the equation, you’ll eventually be less capable of producing great work consistently.

The path to getting all three (prolific + brilliant + healthy) is to structure your life in such a way that you’re prepared for the demands of the create-on-demand world and better positioned to have ideas when you need them most. This means establishing practices that support and fuel your creative process, rather than expecting creativity to happen in the cracks and crevices of your already-busy life.

Levenger: You recommend that people keep weekly, monthly and quarterly checkpoints. How do these help keep us on creative track?

Todd: Over time, the problems we need to solve change, but we love to develop permanent solutions to temporary problems. Those once helpful, but now obstructive, solutions become residue that we have to navigate every time we tackle a project. Having frequent checkpoints in your life to think about the best way to approach your work, and to re-commit to practices that unleash your creativity, is the best method I’ve found for staying purposeful about work instead of slipping into drone mode.

Levenger: One piece of advice you give is “don’t be a cover band.” What does that mean?

Todd: Cover bands are bands that play other people’s music. They earn their living by imitating what others have already made. Many cover bands enjoy a run of success, but because they haven’t developed a unique voice or a platform for their own music, they’re quickly forgotten when a better cover band comes along. I see a similar thing happening a lot in the marketplace. There are individuals and companies that are quick to jump on the latest fad or to imitate what is popular, but there’s a kind of shallowness to their work because it’s not rooted in something authentic and unique to them.

One of the most poignant thoughts about this came from the twentieth-century mystic and monk Thomas Merton. He wrote, “Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such a hurry to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves.” We need to take the time to allow our voice to develop, which means being purposeful about how we engage our work, trying to add value, and not settling for shortcuts.

Levenger: At a time when digital dominates, why did you want to create a physical notebook for budding accidentals to use?

Todd: Digital tools are helpful for so many things, but often “soft connections” are lost when they’re not worked out in a physical space. By “soft,” I mean connections between concepts that may not be apparent on the surface because the concepts aren’t directly adjacent, but that become intuitive over time.

By working on a problem on a sheet of paper, you have every possibility in front of you and are more likely to notice connections that could be lost in the digital ether. Additionally, something about the tactile nature of pen on paper seems to root the mind in the problem at hand.

Levenger: What do you feel is the most helpful element of your Circa notebook?

Todd: Most great creative ideas are the “smashing together” of existing concepts into something new. The Circa Idea Book is designed to help people play with ideas and concepts and see connections they may not have otherwise noticed. By engaging in free association, they will look for solutions in places they otherwise wouldn’t, and will increase their chances of generating more novel ideas.

Levenger: What’s been your most creative thought today?

Todd: If all goes as planned, I haven’t had it yet.

Now to you, dear reader: What’s been your most creative thought today? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments). And if you decide to own Todd’s Circa Idea Book, come back to the same question and see how you answer it then.

Tops on today’s to-do list: Read how Julie Morgenstern gets you organized and keeps you balanced

In the 1960s, speed-reading courses were all the rage. Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics was one of many courses that thousands of people took, in a desperate attempt to keep up with the unprecedented jet-age torrent of reading material—all of it on paper.

Whatever happened?

Today we never hear about speed-reading, but not because it didn’t work. People can be trained to read very rapidly with high comprehension—and a few people do. But, as most people came to realize, speed isn’t the most important thing when it comes to reading. What is, oddly, is slowing down. It’s the pondering and reflecting—it’s the deciding what your reading means to you and, sometimes, acting on it.

Eleanor Roosevelt (who lived until 1962) said, “What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind.”

On a regular basis, it seems, we have to re-learn that quality, not quantity, is what matters. Today’s tantalizing version of speed-reading is multi-tasking.

Multi-tasking offers a fool’s-gold way to cram more life into life. And although Eleanor Roosevelt is no longer here to help wise us up, we have other people who can. One of the best is Julie Morgenstern.

I’ve known and admired Julie for many years, and now am delighted that we are partnering with Julie to offer her Balanced Life calendars and note page layouts in Levenger Circa format.

 Over breakfast in New York one day last fall, Julie gave me counsel. After listening to me complain about spending too much time in front of my computer yet always feeling behind, she surprised me by suggesting that I spend the first and last hour of my day screenless.  

I can report to you, dear reader, that when I’ve managed to do this, I’m a much happier and more balanced fellow. (In fact, I did it this morning, before sitting down to finish these words on my screen that will soon appear on yours.)

I think you’ll enjoy other surprising counsel, captured below in this exclusive interview with Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison, from this American treasure named Julie.

—Steve

Levenger: What is the major mistake most people make in trying to get organized?

Julie Morgenstern: I’m going to give you three, because when we talk about organization in terms of time, there are three common mistakes.

The first is writing your to-do’s in too many places rather than settling on a single place for them all. Everywhere you need to be, everything you need to do—for home, work, life—all of it should be listed in one place.

We can only prioritize in context. If we never see the whole picture, we’re not confident in the decisions we make. Even the most accomplished people struggle with this: “Where do I capture it all?”

Levenger: So a consolidated to-do list corrects the first mistake. What are the other big organizational mistakes people make?

Julie:  Waiting until the morning of to create or review the day’s to do’s. The morning of is too late. The pressures of the day are already upon you. Review “tomorrow + 2”--tomorrow plus two days beyond that—by the end of the day before. That way you have the time to mentally prepare and make adjustments as needed. This three-day arc provides context for good daily decision making, and keeps you from getting caught up in unnecessary urgencies.

Levenger: Does it matter how long the list is?

Julie: Yes. And that’s the third most common mistake: not planning realistically in terms of how long things will take. People go into a state of denial or wishful thinking about their daily plans, and then run out of time. That leads to a feeling of defeat. By bravely recognizing the limits of each day and how long each to-do on your list will take, we see in advance what will or won’t fit, and become more strategic. Time estimating is the gateway skill to good time management. Once you look at the math, it become easier to delegate, say no, and overcome all the other psychological resistance to making good decisions about where you spend your time.

Levenger: Is multitasking (a) productive or (b) just inevitable, given the many things that seem to vie for our attention these days?

Julie:  I would say “c.”

Levenger:  Meaning it’s both productive and inevitable?

Julie [laughing]: No. Meaning it’s neither. Multi-tasking is an old-fashioned, obsolete time-management concept. And yet, our world is conducive to it. Wherever you go, a screen is within arm’s reach of your elbow. It’s very tempting to multi-task.

But in the past seven years science has proved, in study after study, that the brain cannot toggle effectively between tasks. You’re on the phone, scanning email, and glancing at the report on your desk, all at the same time. It feels efficient, but it’s just the opposite. It takes the brain four times longer to recognize and process each thing it’s working on when switching back and forth between tasks.

Levenger: So it actually takes more time to complete each task, even though we thought it was otherwise.

Julie: Right. It’s more time-consuming and less effective. Also, brain scientists tell us that what we learn while we’re multi-tasking has a very low retention rate. Which means we have to learn it all over again. For example, in a one-hour phone call with six people on the phone, there are maybe seven minutes when everyone is actually paying attention at the same time. How efficient is that? People end up needing four or five meetings when one would’ve been sufficient if everyone was fully present and prepared.

Levenger: Because they’re also checking emails and glancing at the report on their desk.

Julie: Exactly. We are in a gravitational pull toward multi-tasking, and we must fight it like the dickens.

Levenger: So how do we defy gravity?

Julie: You have to retrain yourself to work sequentially and focus fully on one thing at a time. Since the texture of our world has become more fragmented, we need to learn to break down our work into smaller pieces; to fit the smaller windows of time within which we can focus.  For example, if you have a six-hour project, break it into a series of six one-hour steps. It’s easier to resist distractions when you have something specific and measurable to focus on for an hour at a time.

Levenger: Are there any other ways to boost our efficiency?

Julie: Yes. I call it batching. When you batch tasks, you’re more efficient. Think of how people will cluster their errands, doing them all in one trip or in one day, rather than in knee-jerk fashion. This saves time.

When you switch between different kinds of thinking or workstreams, it takes more effort. It’s like opening different drawers in your brain. You have to keep one drawer open awhile, to give your brain a chance to perform that task optimally. Say you’re a salesperson. If you batch all your cold calls, by the time you get to your third one, you’ve got your mojo; you’re “on.”

Time management is about how to organize, batch and sequence your day to maximize your energy and your brainpower for peak performance. That’s true for your personal life as well as your professional one.

Levenger: That’s why your planner encourages users to separate “Do” from “Call.”

Julie: Yes. It’s like a hand that guides you. “Do” often requires more time than “call.” It involves different parts of your brain—different drawers.

Levenger: Why is balance such an important aspect of your philosophy?

Julie:  If you don’t consciously carve out time for each part of your life, one department will monopolize it. That’s because we gravitate toward what’s either the loudest or the easiest. Always try to balance—between work, family, friendship, community. When people strike the right balance, they are fueled: they are energized, satisfied, whole.

Levenger: That gravity again. How do we achieve balance?

Julie: Through time mapping. When you know time is carved out, you make the most efficient use of it. You subdivide your schedule into blocks that guarantee, for example, that you’ll spend time not just on your work but on yourself as well.

The art and craft of time mapping is figuring out the right structure, depending on what feels right for you. It can be very structured or it can be looser.

Levenger: Your organizational tools are paper-based. How do you see the role of paper evolving in our digital world?

Julie: Planning how to spend your time is not a mechanical process. It requires deep, reflective thinking. Neuroscience is telling us that even though we can do everything on line, it keeps us in a shallow part of our brain, the frontal cortex. We lose a sense of judgment. So we need screen breaks throughout the day to go beyond the frontal cortex: to go deeper.

On paper, you stop and reflect. “What’s the highest and best use of my time?” It’s a thought-full process. Plus, a lot of people think better on paper.

I’m not anti-technology. I have and use an iPhone, the MacBook Air, and some very cool headphones for when I go to the gym. All of our contacts and the majority of our filing system are digitized. We use Skype for coaching calls, and I give seminars all over the world—most recently, Asia, Brazil, South Africa and Switzerland—using HDVC from New York.

But in 23 years of teaching time management, I’ve watched many people migrate to technology for their to-do’s, and then come back to paper. The Wall Street Journal conducted a survey in late December of last year on the kind of system people used for their to-do’s. Over half of them used paper-based systems.

Something about writing helps to process and emblazon your thoughts and ideas on your brain. In writing, there’s more of a relationship. It’s you talking to you, rather than a machine telling you.

Levenger: Or as we say at Levenger, “With paper, it’s personal.”

Julie: Yes. Personal, and productive.

Now to you, dear reader: How do you stay focused, when all around you the digital is dancing? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

—Steve