
Solitude and Leadership - ssclafani
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/
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deepGem
Am glad HN allows re-posting. I'd have definitely missed this wonderful
article. I've read so many articles on leadership and this is one and probably
one of the few that I've found meaningful along with Ed Catmull's story at
Pixar and Jack Welsh's autobiography. While it's true that Tweets and facebook
messages are distracting, it's also true that these are the sources of some of
the best available information today. If we learn to tune ourselves not to be
distracted,and rather focus on a couple of tweets or facebook messages that we
want to or find interesting, that might probably be the best way to stay
focused and imbibe all the other qualities that this article has put forth.

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samdk
This has been posted before, but is worth reading if you haven't.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1195641> -> a few comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1476425> -> lots of comments

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scrrr
Well, it is a good thing that it is possible to repost links at HN. Otherwise
I'd have missed this lecture.

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bobf
I loved the author's discussion of "the deep friendship of intimate
conversation" as a form of solitude and introspection. I've experienced
increased self-acquaintance through such conversation a few times in life, and
can't imagine ever forgetting a single one.

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adrianwaj
Link between Solitude and Creativity:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2060743>

I think a good leader should be adept socially as they are alone. They must
synthesize group consciousness into something that works within their own
independent thought processes. It depends on the situation. The group can only
want something that it doesn't already have. But everyone is their own leader,
and a good leader should inspire this intra-leadership in others. Give
freedom, not take it away.

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izendejas
The thesis of this lecture makes sense to me. I, however, think it's still
possible to do a fair bit of great reading via blogs, Twitter (well, links
shared via Twitter)and via Hacker News (take this very link, for example) and
not just via great books, but it's certainly easier to get distracted by
these.

Yes, you need time to concentrate on doing great things and introspecting, but
it's important to open oneself up to different experiences, especially the
ones that make you feel uncomfortable (but that won't hurt anyone, I would
hope). That means breaking concentration and quite possibly even breaking your
own moral values--or those set by your predecessors/institutions and peers,
really. If not, how else will you know what's right from wrong or whether you
truly dislike something or someone?

I'm not sure Deresiewicz would disagree with that, since he argues that
original ideas come about when one can "make associations, draw connections,
take [one] by surprise". But I thought it was worth expanding on this idea
because in order to make new associations, you have to go out and experience
something different that will add new neural connections.

Let's take our so called "war on terrorism". The key question I'd ask myself
is, why are there such terrorists? Is it really that they hate our freedoms,
our religion, etc? Every time I read some Opinion piece by an author who
thinks (s)he knows why terrorists hate America, I am turned away. How the hell
can they know if they haven't even been there and lived amongst them? So it
saddens me that some of the so-called experts of our time are those who only
read a lot and thus can articulate "their" ideas well. I don't care if you
read the greatest novels and history books, if you don't get out in the
field/real world also, then you won't truly understand an issue and thus,
you're not an expert/(thought) leader.

