Welcome to the 23rd edition of The List featuring three articles and a relatively short video. As usual I hope you kick back with these on Saturday morning or on a lazy Sunday afternoon and enjoy.
Top MLB prospect lives by his own rules -- in a van -- ESPN
It unsettled him in those first months to see so many zeros on his bank account balance -- "Who am I to deserve that?" he wondered. "What have I really done?" -- so he hired financial advisers and asked them to stash the money in conservative investments where Norris wouldn't have to think about it. His advisers deposit $800 a month into his checking account -- or about half as much as he would earn working full time for minimum wage. It's enough to live in a van, but just barely. "I'm actually more comfortable being kind of poor," he says, because not having money maintains his lifestyle and limits the temptation to conform.
A Brewing Problem - The Atlantic
This is really interesting to me because we actually use Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (now Keurig Green Mountain) as a case study in one of the classes I help teach as an example of appreciative inquiry and corporate social responsibility. Maybe it's time to update the case study?
Meet the Makers: Ableton Developers at Work (14:04)
I love seeing videos of how companies go about getting their work done. The culture at Ableton seems like a great place for the creative and the curious. Anyone have more videos like this? Share them with me on Twitter, eh?
How Steinbeck Used the Diary as a Tool of Discipline, a Hedge Against Self-Doubt, and a Pacemaker for the Heartbeat of Creative Work - Brain Pickings
This is so, so great. I'd say the vast majority of my entries in Day One are things I've written while agonizing over the fact that I need to get to work or don't have any ideas for things to write about. Looks like Steinbeck did a similar thing with his diary while writing The Grapes of Wrath. The other thing that's kind of cool is to see that even an absolute titan of the literary world was plagued by self-doubt -- even while writing a book that ended up earning him a Pulitzer Prize. It's a nice reminder that you aren't doing anything wrong if work is hard.