I was inter­est­ed enough to check this out from a TED newslet­ter. Pret­ty inter­est­ing TED Talk by Ste­fan Sag­meis­ter.

Ste­fan Sag­meis­ter is no mere com­mer­cial gun for hire. Sure, he’s cre­at­ed eye-catch­ing graph­ics for clients includ­ing the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed, but he pours his heart and soul into every piece of work. His design work is at once time­less and of the moment, and his painstak­ing atten­tion to the small­est details cre­ates work that offers some­thing new every time you look at it.

While a sense of humor invari­ably sur­faces in his designs, Sag­meis­ter is nonethe­less very seri­ous about his work; his inti­mate approach and sin­cere thought­ful­ness ele­vate his design. A gen­uine mav­er­ick, Sag­meis­ter achieved noto­ri­ety in the 1990s as the design­er who self-harmed in the name of craft: He cre­at­ed a poster adver­tis­ing a speak­ing engage­ment by carv­ing the salient details onto his tor­so.

Some of the points he high­light­ed in his TED talk were:

• Help­ing oth­er peo­ple helps me.
• Hav­ing guts always works out for me.
• Think­ing life will be bet­ter in the future is stu­pid. I have to live now.
• Start­ing a char­i­ty is sur­pris­ing­ly easy.
• Being not truth­ful works against me.
• Every­thing I do always comes back to me.
• Assum­ing is sti­fling.
• Drugs feel great in the begin­ning and become a drag lat­er on.
• Over time I get used to every­thing and start tak­ing for grant­ed.
• Mon­ey does not make me hap­py.
• Trav­el­ing alone is help­ful for a new per­spec­tive on life.
• Keep­ing a diary sup­ports per­son­al devel­op­ment.
• Try­ing to look good lim­its my life.
• Mate­r­i­al lux­u­ries are best enjoyed in small dos­es.
• Wor­ry­ing solves noth­ing.
• Com­plain­ing is sil­ly. either act or for­get.
• Actu­al­ly doing the things I set out to do increas­es my over­all lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion.
• Every­body thinks they are right.
• Low expec­ta­tions are a good strat­e­gy.
• What­ev­er I want to explore pro­fes­sion­al­ly, its best to try it out for myself first.
• Every­body who is hon­est is inter­est­ing.

There’s also a com­mu­ni­ty site ded­i­cat­ed to Things I Have Learned In My Life in which you may con­tribute, share, and hear oth­er people’s life lessons.

PS. Thanks to Mar­co de Jong for sum­ma­riz­ing them on the TED Talk page.