Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. Fun fact: zebra jumping spiders have a "thing" for green laser pointers and can see the moon.
    
2. The School Of Life asks "are you getting enough sleep?"
    
3. Beethoven and the difference between genius and talent: "Genius has to be founded on major talent, but it adds a freshness and wildness of imagination, a raging ambition, an unusual gift for learning and growing, a depth and breadth of thought and spirit, an ability to make use of not only your strengths but also your weaknesses, an ability to astonish not only your audience but yourself."
    
4. Bill Gates ponders "What If People Run Out of Things to Do?" in his review of Yuval Noah Harari's new book Homo Deus. His last book Sapiens is excellent so I'm looking forward to reading his newest one.
    
5. This week's musical recommendation is Gaunt by Kiasmos. I just booked tickets to see them play Erased Tapes' ten year anniversary show later in the year and I can't wait!

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

Ipswich By Night

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s five things…

1. "If you can learn it, it's a skill. If it's important, but innate, it's a talent." The difference between what is a skill and what is a talent is often lost or confused. As Seth Godin succinctly explains here, there is a difference and it's an important one.
    
2. The idea of being too inspired, isn't one you probably entertain too often. But seeking out inspiration versus actually doing original work is a fine balance. This is a great post on the topic by Jason Fried — "Don’t be influenced too much. Be aware of what’s great, but don’t get other people’s work too deep in your head or you’ll be doing their work, not yours."
    
3. Much to the annoyance of my brother I've watched this several times. — Monty Python’s Argument Sketch performed by two vintage speech synthesizers.
    
4. This year I've really embraced the idea of sharing more of my work and ideas for free (here's one example of that). There are obviously pros and cons associate with this, but for me, I think the upsides far outweigh the downsides. Using photography as an example, these articles both make a great case for sharing more, rather than less.
    
5. Earlier this week I finished reading Sam Harris' book Free Will. It's a mind blowing book and I highly recommend it. The audiobook read by Sam is particularly good.

That's all for this week. If you liked this, check out my previous Five Things posts or sign up to receive future posts in your inbox.