Penman

Jake Weidman is the youngest certified Master Penman in the world by 30 years. His passion is to create beauty with pen and ink, and he certainly does.

He mixes calligraphy into his art work to "give the words and the pictures more life."

It's "one of the oldest romances between the eye and the hand."

Incentives

Running the welfare program of New York City for six years taught Robert Doar something important. He says "it taught me that employment is central to the well-being of families and the economy."

That lesson, he thinks, now explains why the U.K. has done a little better for their low-income families during the economic turndown that started in 2008. The key is that their welfare system has more incentives to work, and our American welfare system has fewer incentives to work.

"[T]he British experience shows that proper reforms of the safety net can help individuals return to work—which is crucial for lifting them and their families out of poverty." Examples of those reforms are here.

Self-control

My friend Sheryle writes powerfully for Christians in Recovery, out of personal experience with recovery and personal experience with God's help. Here she talks about hard choices. What if the way to recovery is difficult or painful? 

image: christians-in-recovery.org

"You either embrace the pain of discipline or you embrace the pain of regret." The "pain of regret" would be regretting that you didn't embrace the pain of discipline so you could be free.

"A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls," according to the Bible in Proverbs 25:28. He/she is so exposed to injury.

Iceberg

This illustration comes from economist Dambisa Moyo, originally from the African country of Zambia. She no doubt knows a thing or two about the path to success.

When you hear about someone's success, don't allow your thoughts to go to resentment. Success is more about persistence and hard work than good luck.

Intense

(cont'd)

Engineer Jeremy Hollman was already disappointed in his job at Boeing at the age of 23. When Elon Musk recruited him with his radical vision of change in the aerospace industry, he liked it: "I thought it was an opportunity I could not pass up."

Young and single, he was willing to "give up any semblance of having a life in favor of working at SpaceX non-stop." He worked with the top engineer to create a new rocket engine. Then he loaded it in onto a U-Haul trailer behind a Hummer and drove 4,000 lbs of gear from CA to Texas for intense trial and error testing.

A great job, but super consuming, with failure after failure. "I was really, really frustrated and just tired and mad." His glasses fell down a flame duct and he had no time to go to the optometrist. His safety glasses got scratched. He "vented about this in the factory one night." Musk was nearby and heard it all.

Two hours later, Musk's assistant appeared with a lasik eye surgery appointment. He paid for the surgery. Hollman says, "Elon can be very demanding, but he'll make sure the obstacles in your way are removed."

from Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Start over

We all know Elon Musk somehow managed to really change both the space and car industries, and this while still in his 30's. He has super focus, drive, vision, and built a network of super talent around his goals.

He recruits fantastic people and inspires them, and then he makes fantastic work demands – which are also part of the legend. "Ulcer-inducing deadlines” and 100-hour work weeks make for some bad stories, but I'm going to share some good stories from that biography I'm reading . . 

After working so hard, sacrificing personal time, the employees of SpaceX had big investment of effort in their rockets. They were going where many had failed before and they wanted to succeed. 

"The failed launch [third rocket test] left many SpaceX exmployees shattered. "It was like the worst [blank] day ever.You don't usually see grown-ups weeping, but there they were. We were tired and broken emotionally." 

"Musk addressed the workers right away, and encouraged them to get back to work. He said, "Look. We are going to do this. It's going to be okay. Don't freak out."

SpaceX employee Singh says, "It was like magic.Everyone chilled out immediately and started to focus on figuring out what just happened and how to fix it. It went from despair to hope and focus."

from Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

(cont'd tomorrow)

More for the 20-somethings

Jason Nazar started a company in his 20's, is now 34,  and employs an "amazing group of 20-somethings." He has some things he'd like his employees, and all 20-somethings, to understand about how to be successful at work.  So he wrote this article, "20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get."

Here's a sample:  use more personal & phone contact, keep building your "technical chops", take responsibility for your mistakes, go ahead and try things (and make mistakes), be the first in and the last to leave - and your reputation is priceless so take good care of it.

Jason blogs about business and Los Angeles here.

(For more insights on how to get traction, see "Your Defining 20's.")

photo:  levoleague.com