Explorer Steve Boyes takes us on an epic journey to save Africa’s last remaining wetland wilderness

Fellows Friday

Steve Boyes is passionately devoted to the preservation of wilderness, as well as to restoring and protecting species and landscapes already damaged by human intervention. At TED2014, the ornithologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer spoke to the TED Blog about his work to save South Africa’s endangered Cape parrot and his campaign to get the Okavango Delta listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Oh, and he also walked us through the profound experience of being a tiny human in the midst of Earth’s primordial wilderness. Below, an edited transcript of our conversation.

Why is wilderness important?

Wilderness cannot be restored or recreated—only destroyed. We are about to lose the last glimpses into prehistory that connect us to a time before modern man. By wilderness, I mean places untouched by modern society that are capable of completely taking you away, bringing you to tears, making you feel spiritual — all of those things that people go into nature to find. I firmly believe that in the next two decades, humans will lose our last true wilderness areas if we do not focus on preserving them.

My long-term research and expeditions focus on the future of the Okavango Delta — Africa’s last-remaining wetland wilderness, located in northern Botswana. This untouched 18,000 square kilometer alluvial fan is the largest of its kind, and is supplied by the world’s largest undeveloped river catchment — the mighty Kavango Basin. The Okavango Delta is home to the largest-remaining elephant population and keystone populations of lion, hyena, giraffe and lechwe antelopes. It’s the size of Texas, and visible from space.

Every year, my team and I pole ourselves in dugout canoes — called  “mekoro” — across the Okavango Delta, guided by baYei people, who have lived in harmony with this environment for hundreds of years. Accessing the central wilderness of the delta takes eight days, and the baYei’s mekoro are the only craft that can get us there. Twenty years ago, the journey would’ve taken two hours in a boat out of the only nearby town, Maun. It’s an indicator of how far the wilderness area has retreated.

These 340-kilometer research expeditions take us 15 to 18 days through the unexplored central wilderness. It’s a scientific investigation — we are establishing baselines for biodiversity so that we have a point of reference when things change, as they inevitably will. This pristine delta and river are threatened by irrigation schemes, agricultural development, hunting, overfishing, mining exploration, poaching, tourism and population increase, all of which have already had an impact.

The Okavango Delta expedition team cross the vast wetland in the only possible form of transportation, a dugout canoe called a “mekoro.” Photo: Wild Bird Trust

You are an orthinologist, so your first love is birds, right? What is the link between your study of birds and your work preserving the Okavango Delta?

Put simply, birds can choose with their wings. When things go wrong in an ecosystem, they will simply not return. One of our projects in the Okavango Delta is the Okavango Wetland Bird Survey. It is a broad-based biodiversity survey that focuses on birds as bioindicators of significant change in the water and islands of the Okavango. You’ll see all the storks come in, check it out, go hmm, and go somewhere else — and maybe die in the process. But they’ll leave. It’s almost instant. One year they’re there, and the next year they’re gone.

As for how I got to the Okavango in the first place—I did my Ph.D. on the Meyer’s parrot, which thrives there. The Meyer’s parrot is the most abundant, widespread parrot in Africa, with massive distribution and six subspecies. It’s a highly successful parrot and typically lives in remote river valleys throughout the African subtropics. It’s a close relative of the South African Cape parrot — which is, in contrast, Africa’s most endangered parrot. Yet we knew nothing about the Meyer’s parrot. I wanted to help the Cape Parrot, so I went to the Okavango to learn the Meyer’s parrot’s secrets as to why it’s so successful. I’ll tell you one:  Meyer’s parrots are the only hole-nesting birds that breed in winter in the Okavango Delta, because they are the only animal that feeds on an abundant supply of insect larvae pupating in seed pods. I wanted to learn things like this, to take to the Cape parrot and try and create context for them.

The Wild Bird Trust works to restore the population and forest habitat of South Africa’s endangered Cape parrot. Photo: Wild Bird Trust

When I’m not in the Okavango Delta, I’m back in South Africa working on the iziKhwenene Project — iziKhwenene means “Cape parrots” in isiXhosa. We work with local communities of the Amathole Mountains, teaching people how to rehabilitate the forest ecosystem that the birds rely on. Together, we are restoring Afromontane forest patches by planting thousands of indigenous trees and creating protected areas. We also support Cape parrots by administering vaccines, building nest boxes and offering supplementary food. Rebuilding destroyed forest requires the participation of local communities over generations. So we are establishing a conservation culture, capturing the imaginations of local children and providing jobs for their parents. And it has worked: once the Cape parrot was never mentioned, but it is now widely known in South Africa, especially in the villages below the Amathole Mountains. Local community members now shout “iziKhwenene” in joy as we drive past in one of the project vehicles.

Together, the iziKhwenene Project and the work in the Okavango Delta grew and grew until we needed to establish the Wild Bird Trust in 2009. We want to use endangered bird species as ambassadors for threatened ecosystems. So, it is really all about birds and people. We cannot exist one without the other.

Your tales of visiting the Okavango Delta are thrilling. Tell us more about the experience. Who goes with you?

We have two research camps, which we visit seasonally. One’s testing nest boxes, so we learn about what Meyer’s parrots need and can take this information to the Cape Parrots and their nest boxes. The other one is focused on wetland birds. This camp is more accessible and can accommodate volunteers and scientists. There are three camp managers, who cook and so on, that travel with us. Each year, we also do a crossing of the delta to which we add one writer, one filmmaker and one blogger.

I believe that one of the key things we need to do to preserve wilderness is to convince millions of people around the world to protect landscapes and wilderness areas they’ll never visit, because they simply can’t. We want to share our experiences, so they know these places exist and are important. The Into the Okavango website, an open-access site where we upload and track data in real-time during our journey, allows the world to follow us and experience what we’re experiencing firsthand. It’s about inspiration.

We have a core group of outdoorsman and scientists that engineer their annual calendars to accommodate these annual expeditions across the Okavango Delta. We will all continue doing this for the foreseeable future.

Surrounded by wildlife in the Okavango Delta. Photo: Wild Bird Trust

Aren’t these people afraid to enter such wilderness? What’s it like?

Often production people don’t have any wilderness background, but I’ve guided for 15 years. I know how to take care of people in the wilderness, and how to support a wilderness experience. When I take you, I’m going to prepare you with a lot of talking around the fire. For example, you’ll have to be a vegetarian the whole time. You will have the bare minimum of gear — no possessions. From the first day, when you get out into the landscape, you’ll be on the water—at one with nature—exposed for three weeks.

Every day on expedition we have to be off the water by 4 o’clock, because we typically use hippo paths to travel by day—the hippos use them at night. So well before sunset we’re out of the water and setting up camp. You set your tent up. I say, “I’m going to give you a little three-legged stool. You can take a notebook with you, you can take binoculars, a bird book, a little flask of whiskey or tea, whatever you want. And you’re going to walk off, and you tell me where you’re going.” You walk and open yourself to the reality of this place. You must feel and recognize the anxiety building inside you. When it becomes too much to go any further — it could be 10 meters, it could be 100 meters, it’s up to you — you must stop. Find a place up against a tree, on a termite mound. Put your things down. And you sit. You’ve seen all kinds of wildlife that day and now, in this remote place, there are ultimate consequences — we must be all very aware of that. I’ve got a great medical kit and am qualified as a caregiver, but I’m not a medical doctor. We’ve got medical evacuation support: a helicopter could be here in the daytime, within an hour or two, but at night you’re on your own for 12 hours. So you can’t take any risks, and I’m very clear about that. I say, “You’re going to start to see the sun setting—that’s the next source of anxiety. It’s going to build and build until it gets too scary and you cannot handle it anymore. At that point, you walk back to the fire.”

Huddled around the campfire. Photo: Wild Bird Trust

That’s the process of linking a person into that wilderness experience, into the reality of that place they’re in and into themselves. You just sit there quietly and listen. Don’t focus on that feeling of anxiety, just be mindful of it, because it’s telling you when you must go. These are powerful experiences for people, where they get in touch with their own survival instinct speaking to them, as well as a landscape. That can teach you — it is a bit of a cliché — how small you are.

Once you’ve gone through eight days of that, you’ve arrived — it is literally a wonderland, a wilderness beyond comparison. It is thousands of birds, it is hundreds of elephants, it is so many lions at night that you don’t know what to do. They are everywhere. So many hippos. You’ll have a clan of 50 hyenas come at some point in the night, running around the camp, trying to see what is going on. They’re very inquisitive animals that inspect and break everything in a matter of minutes.

How do you protect yourself from the lions and hyenas and elephants?

Don’t need to. They have no interest in human beings. You just have to be a calm, normal human, and these animals do not consider you prey — they’re very scared of you. It’s just if you are drunk, or trying to hurt them, or doing something odd. These animals know that human beings are the most dangerous thing they’re ever going to see in the wilderness, and they’ve known that for 100,000 years. You just respect all wildlife, and you’re safe. Live mindfully and live calm — you’ll be safe.

When we first accessed this wilderness, it hadn’t been seen for 60 years. It had been cut off from the world. And before that, people had only really visited it for another 60 years. Before that, not one human being had been in there. It’d have been impossible, the technology didn’t exist. The first time we got in there, there was a small group — about four of us. Everyone had gone off to do their walkabouts. They were all sitting somewhere; I didn’t know where they were. These two elephant herds — bachelor herds — come onto the small island and they’re [makes growling/roaring sounds] hitting the palms. Chaos ensues. Dust going up. And then I see — doop! — like meercats: my brother’s up, Giles is up, Pete’s up, I’m up. This was the first time on the expedition that I knew exactly where they were sitting. I was sitting under a sausage tree completely overwhelmed by this place.

Elephants at sunset. Photo: Wild Bird Trust

I wanted to know what they were feeling after discovering this place for themselves. So I went to speak to each of them and—whispering, like we were in a church—asked, “Well, what do you think?” Every single one of them just cried, and cried, and cried. And I cried with him, and I cried with the next guy. Because it was just —  you try to say something about an elephant, or you try to say something about a lion, but you cry. It’s happened many times since.

That’s what we might lose—these places. There’s no doubt in my mind that true wilderness is the birthplace of all religion. It’s where Muhammad, Moses, Jesus — they all went into the deserts, the mountain, and they sat quietly. It’s exactly like I make people do. If we lose that, we will lose the secrets that those guys were given, whether it’s on a tablet or in a book. Those were important secrets that helped societies continue for thousands of years. We need to be able to sit silently in the wilderness to listen to the universe and ourselves.

Buddha under the tree?

Yes. I believe that in the next few decades we’ll lose that tree, those last wild places. There’s not much left. Meditation is our only hope after the last wilderness goes. I don’t meditate, perhaps because I am addicted to wild places that bring me into that state instantly.

But the “wild” is not only found in remote, faraway places. In many of my talks about wilderness, I’ll say, “Picture yourself. You’re sitting at home, reading a book in your favorite room. It’s late at night and you’re calm. The lights suddenly go out. It’s pitch dark. The hum of the refrigerator down the hall  that you rarely hear, but was always there, is gone. It’s that eerie silence. That’s the ‘wildness’ saying, ‘I am here. I am never going to go away. You just need to be quiet to see, feel and hear me.’”

Our planet will die and all will go gray if we lose our connection to true “wildness.” It’s always there. It’s the fabric of the universe. That’s what we must tune ourselves into. It’s overwhelming, and direct, and fluid in the wilderness. But come home and you will find it in the park, in your favorite river, that hike you love, the pond your kids play in. One of the best places to experience it is swimming in the ocean, feeling that anxiety and wonder building.

Above: watch a trailer for the upcoming feature documentary Okavango, which folllows Steve Boyes and his team of explorers on their epic journey into the primordial wilderness of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Their mission: to ensure the preservation of Africa’s last-remaining wetland wilderness.

During the next couple of years, you’ll be filming a feature documentary on the Okavango Delta, in partnership with National Geographic. What is your aim for this film?

We believe that the only way to save the Okavango Delta is by building a global movement to preserve the Kavango Basin as a multinational UNESCO World Heritage Site. The documentary is in service to that goal. In 2015, we will undertake a 3-month, 2,200 kilometer expedition down the length of the Okavango River in dug-out canoes. It’s not just about the adventure: the research data that will be generated by our team of experts — a botanist, zoologist, ichthyologist, herpetologist, ornithologist and sociologist — will provide the maps and media to motivate the establishment of the first protected areas in the catchment. As we travel, we will also share this impossible expedition down the world’s wildest river live with the world like never before, through the Into the Okavango website. We need to whole world to want to care about preserving the Okavango Delta, just to reserve the opportunity to one day visit this primordial wilderness.

Greeting the wild. Photo: Wild Bird Trust

How do you live? When you’re not out in the delta, are you in an urban area?

I live on a 25-acre property in Hogsback Village on Hogsback Mountain in the Amathole Mountains, where we run the iziKhwenene Project. About 80 people live there. My wife, newborn son and I live a normal life with television and iPods. We love community life and being able to work for a landscape and a species. When Jack gets older, we will move back to Cape Town to give him every opportunity to be who he wants to be.

More than half the world’s population now lives in cities. Do you see a profound disconnect from nature?

There is, and I do feel it when I speak to people. But there’s not one person I’ve met that cannot share these experiences with me. It’s innately in everyone. We just do a really good job of forgetting, and an even better job of creating extremely dynamic, interactive lives around us that are more than we can handle. We don’t need anything else, so we don’t think about anything else. Our lives in the cities are very full. Because we fill them.

We need to bring more nature back into the cities. We can grow vegetables on the walls of buildings, we can put forests on the roofs. We can use our waste products to fertilize urban gardens and even woodlands. We even have computer programs that can help us design these landscapes. There’s so much we can do—it’s just an investment of time and a little bit of brilliance. We are brilliant creatures. Overall, we need to consume less and share more because community means everything.

Some of the people I live with and work with in the Okavango Delta have no education. They see the world completely differently, and speak in a completely different way. Their language is cyclic, very slow and almost hypnotic. We must not forget them. Their lifestyle is the reason we have a green, wonderful planet. Our lifestyles are not manifesting that at all, so we must celebrate them more.

This is the greatest challenge of the global conservation movement going forward: how do you convince billions of people around the world that have no opportunity to even see nature or stars to care enough about it to conserve it? We need to figure out how to make nature part of our daily lives again, no matter where we live.

TED Fellows is a global network of 300 innovators and trailblazers from a wide spectrum of disciplines. Read more about this community and how to become a part of it »

View the original article here

Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets to Building a Huge Empire

Steve Paul Jobs was born on February 24th, 1955. He is known to be the Chairman, co-founder as well as the CEO of the Apple Inc. He was also the former CEO of well known Pixar Animation Studios. He was also represented among the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company. Not bad!

He completed his studies in California and later he did his frequent after-school lectures in Palo Alto at the Hewlett Packard Company. In a few months time, he was hired in the same place and from there his career started to accelerate. The great personality exhibited by Steve Jobs was told and appreciated far and wide. He was referred to as one of Silicon Valley’s leading egomaniac by Fortune Magazine.

It was in the year 1976 when he founded the company he named Apple Inc. Presently, Jobs is referred to as the single largest shareholder in the Walt Disney Company and also one among its Board of Directors. His presence and appreciation in both the computer as well as entertainment field is remarkable.

With his fame, he is well known for whatever came out from his mouth and was thus noted to be quoted. In casual conversation, Steve Jobs seems to come up with earth-moving quotes. The mastery of this is that most of his quotes can be applied to the the jobs we all have, the careers we all seek, and the lives we all want to lead.

Let's take a look at some of the great quotes of this modern day tech and media leader.
To Build up Confidence

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, so every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know?"

Steve Jobs is confident in whatever decisions he makes and he talks about what has taken him to great heights. He also insists all of us to be good to the heart as our lives are short and death can arrive at any time.
On Confidence and Creativity

“That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder."

People are terrified at times. However, those that make choices based on real criteria, regardless of the conceptual nature of them, can confidently stand behind them and are able to shake off the uncertainties that arise.

On the Experience as a User

“Our DNA is as a consumer company – for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to the par, it’s our fault, plain and simple."

User satisfaction is not just for business owners. Your boss could be considered as a user of your output. By mastering your trade and ensuring a complete and accurate output (albeit a report, a design, an article, etc.), your 'users' will be happy and reward you with continued business.

On Focus

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

The real meaning of focus is not the simple yes. Instead, it is all about the ideas which are imparted by picking and sorting the best out. Careful detection and estimation of your plans and the ideas and strategies taken to implement them are what Steve Jobs is talking about.
On Passion

“When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante; they have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.”

This comes down to passion. When you have passion for what you do, good results and dedication are sure follow. Identifying your passion is difficult but once there, work is no longer work. As a worker, find and live your passion. As an employer, get employees to really see the vision and their role in taking the company there.

On Leadership Qualities

“So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things."

Cisco Systems had a great motto at one point that read, "We are stronger together than we'll ever be apart." Many times, good ideas are made great by seeking input from others. By surrounding yourself with people that you'd admit are smarter than you, greatness has a chance.
On Product Tactics

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.”

This is about legitimacy. Getting paid is great but executing on a long term vision based on demand is a true art.

On Succession Planning

“I mean, some people say, ‘Oh God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.”

The real work of a CEO is to lay pipe (sort of speak). A good CEO is laying the groundwork for an organization to succeed on its own - today and tomorrow. Much of this has to do not only with the people that surround you, but letting go of the ego.

On LayOffs

“We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of efforts to get them into Apple in the first place – the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.”

When you make a concrete effort to only hire the best employees, releasing them may cost more than keeping them around. Sure. Unproductive employees need to go but mass layoffs versus a strategic realignment that moves expertise, is a clear alternative. Choices like this, short term gain versus long term impairment, are critical ones to make.

On the job of Recruiting

“Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answer isn't very important, it’s the meta-data."

The recruiting job is tough indeed and not as easy as you'd think. If you, as a hirer, get to someone's core, you have a chance at understanding them. This is what Steve Jobs would love to say about the entire process of hiring people for work. He also finds it similar to looking out for the needles in the haystack which is simply as impossible as it should be. There are plenty more quotes given out by Steve Jobs. However, these form a decent foundation that you can take to you life in the effort to find great success, for attaining hopes, and building up a real huge empire! Written on 10/09/2008 by Manish Pandey. Manish is a tech-enthusiast and blogs about social media and technology at manishpandey.com. Republished on 10/6/2011, the day after Steve Jobs' death.

View the original article here

Remembering Steve Jobs

This evening, Apple announced that Steve Jobs, its legendary leader, has died. Watch his powerful talk “How to live before you die” — in which Jobs urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks, including death itself.

Tom Rielly, TED’s community director and an early Mac fanboy, writes: “Steve Jobs changed my life totally and utterly (and obviously, I’m not the only one). From the moment he introduced Macintosh with mesmerizing flair, I was hooked by his charisma. I knew that his invention would change everything. Even though I’ve met him only a few times, I felt a deep personal connection to him and his work that transcends the rational. When I heard the news today, I felt physically ill and terribly sad for his wife and children. I will always be grateful to him and the teams he led that brought us the Mac, the iPod, the iPad, Pixar, iTunes … Quite simply he is my hero.”

View the original article here

How Steve Jobs Changed My Productivity

Photo credit: Minifig

One of the world’s most recent innovators passed away yesterday, far too soon and yet achieving so much in the time he had on this planet. Whether you admired, revered or thought little of him (in terms of time spent thinking about him or in terms of who he was), he left an impression that will outlast many of us who are still alive. There have been many tributes to the man, his ideas and his achievements over the past day or so on the Internet, but I’ve yet to encounter one that discussed how the man, his ideas and his achievements have changed the realm to which Stepcase Lifehack primarily dwells in: productivity.

This is not to say Steve Jobs has enhanced the way all of us do things. For a lot of people, his company’s creations played a minimal to non-existent role in their lives – at first glance. But if you look deeper than the iDevices he had a huge hand in bringing to the world, you may find that some of what he helped create may have had a more profound impact on your productivity than you realize.

Rather than endow you with how Steve Jobs may have had a hand in making you more productive, I’ve thought about how his innovations have done so for myself. There are some things that were quite apparent to me from the get-go, but as I dug deeper I found there was a lot more there than meets the “i”.

There’s no question that the things Steve dreamt up (or re-invented, innovated, improved, etc.) has boosted my efficiency. Much of what I use to manage my time exists on the platforms his company created. I don’t need to use those solutions to manage my time; I can use pen and paper just as easily – and still do for some aspects of my workflow. But the fact that they are at my disposal has allowed me to reflect on the value of time as a whole.

When I don’t have my task management program at the ready, I’m not at a loss – at least, not anymore. Instead, I’m more mindful of where my time is being spent and how quickly it can pass. That mindset came to the forefront yesterday when I read that Steve had died. He was so young, only 19 years older than me. Sure, that may seem like a long time, but it isn’t. It really isn’t.

With all that he did in the time that he had, he treated time like the precious commodity that it is – and unlike his wealth (which not many of us have), we all have the same amount of time in the day to accomplish what matters most to us. He did that, and that shows how much he valued his time. I aspire to treat time with as much care and reverence as Steve did.

Every Apple device I’ve ever used has been more intuitive than any other computing device I’ve ever used. I’d go as far to say that my Mac computers have truly been “appliances” in the sense that I know they’ll do pretty much what I need them to do time and time again, much like a refrigerator, a microwave or a deep freezer. I think that’s what he was going for. I also think he wanted to make sure that an Apple computer would blend into your home as seamlessly as any other household appliance would. The look on the outside was simple and inviting, more than the inside was. But once you got in there, that’s where things got done.

Everything seems to flow in iWorld. The whole “mind like water mantra” that David Allen espouses to fits Apple’s philosophy as well. Get the stuff out of the way that blocks access to progress. Steve got this, and it showed in virtually all aspects of his life. The famous photo of him sitting in an apartment with very little stuff surrounding him is a testament to this. There’s no stuff in the way – just what matters. He may have been more complex on the inside, but the uncluttered Apple remote, the miniscule MacBook Air and the glowing white Apple logo that came to replace the spectrum of colours beforehand all showed that simplicity was what he wanted to deliver on the outside. Right down to the mock black turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers – grass-stained or otherwise.

Rarely have I found that using my iDevices has been a chore. But beyond that, his greatest source of play has to be Pixar.

Pixar seems to embody a lot of the earlier aspects of my productivity that Steve has had an impact on: time and simplicity. I’ve never found that watching a Pixar film is a waste of time, and I can only think of one that didn’t appeal to me (sorry, Cars 2). I value Pixar’s work so much that it is the only movie studio where I look forward to hwat they’re working on next. Much like I do with Apple, actually. I value what they offer to me and my family, so much so that I am willing to spend time and money going to the theatre to watch one of their films rather than wait until I can do so at home.

The stories behind each of their films are simple as well. From Wall-E to Toy Story to Up, the heart of the film is the story, and the technology serves to bring the story to life. The technology is the platform, the story is the goods. And the goods are, simply put, brilliant.

Steve loved to work and loved his work. So, for him it was play. If only it was that way for more of us. We spend so much time working and not enough time playing. Imagine if work was play for more of us. It’s become that way for me in recent years, and that’s partially due to what Steve has had a role in delivering.

This is a no-brainer on so many levels, but for me it’s creativity on so many levels as well. Steve’s work has allowed me to integrate my creativity into so much of what I do, almost effortlessly at this juncture of my life. Knowing that I can push boundaries and limitations with the tools I have at my disposal allows for a much greater flow of creative juices. Even as I write this, I know that the wellspring of my creativity can be fostered on a variety of platforms (prose, video, audio) in large part because of Steve’s vision and his ability to create tangible tools from that vision.

I can say, withut a doubt, that I would not be making a living as a writer if it had not been for Steve Jobs. Not because I couldn’t have done it without his innovations, but because I wouldn’t have. The barriers to entry were too high when I started to feel the need to express myself in this career. That would have made taking the risks I’ve taken to get where I’m at today much tougher to swallow. Honestly, I’d probably still be working my old retail day job instead of writing this today. Not necessarily a bad place, but a bad place for me.

Steve Jobs changed my productivity. His life’s work has played a part in helping me craft my life’s work. The best way to honour his memory is for me to press on doing just that: my life’s work. And thanks to his vision I can do that a lot more efficiently and effectively than I could have without it.

Mike Vardy is an independent writer, speaker, podcaster and "productivity pundit" who also dishes the goods at Vardy.me. You can follow him daily on Twitter, listen to him weekly on ProductiVardy, and read more from him eventually at Eventualism.

View the original article here

Steve Rizzo: Nothing but the Funny Stuff

Real life absurdities mix with animated antics in this hilarious special featuring Mr. All-Star Comedian Guy and his animated twin. Join Steve onstage as he finds humor in the most unexpected places. OK... maybe not the MOST unexpected places but some pretty unusual places nonetheless. Now sit back and get ready to laugh yourself silly as Steve Rizzo gives you 'Nothing but the Funny Stuff' on this video!

Price:

Click here to buy from Amazon

Steve Rizzo: Nothing but the Funny Stuff

Real life absurdities mix with animated antics in this hilarious special featuring Mr. All-Star Comedian Guy and his animated twin. Join Steve onstage as he finds humor in the most unexpected places. OK... maybe not the MOST unexpected places but some pretty unusual places nonetheless. Now sit back and get ready to laugh yourself silly as Steve Rizzo gives you 'Nothing but the Funny Stuff' on this video!

Price:

Click here to buy from Amazon