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What Nobody Told You About the First Draft
“When you get an idea, don’t hold it,” architect Vittorio de Feo said. Recalling his master’s quote in Why Architects Still Draw, Paolo Belardi adds that when you get an idea, not taking action right away risks destroying the idea’s vitality. Sketch the idea immediately; draw impulsively, and transcribe unconscious energy from the brain to…
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Why the “Best” Way Is Your Own Way
Advice from James Cameron, on Not Taking Advice For years, I have been a hoarder and disseminator of advice; and I only found advice worth taking by measuring the success of the giver. It wasn’t the most critical way of thinking, and I figured if I found what successful people did, I’d also be able…
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To Make Better Creative Work, Aim for Acceptable, Not Perfect
Perfection can be a complex, philosophical, topic. My current stance: There is such a thing as 100%. If you’re into films, you know Roger Ebert gave four stars to great movies. Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was ranked by the Rolling Stone as the #1 album of the 2010s; just a few years…
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Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you
“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do.” — Byron Katie I originally heard this sentiment in a Tim Ferriss podcast. I’m guessing he got it from Katie.…
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How to stop overthinking and make magic happen
The line between thinking and overthinking is a thin one. It’s hard for anyone to discern where they are relative to it. Err on the side of action, and build momentum. Sometimes, you have to dumb it down. There’s no shortage of sayings, like, “Done is better than perfect,” or, “No time like the present,”…
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You should only compete with one person: yourself
Source: The Mushroom Kingdom It’s easy to compare yourself against other people especially as they flood our screens with images. But when you compete against other people, you judge yourself based on their values and metrics. The problem with this is even if you win, you only do something that’s important to them, not you.…
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How average first drafts become extraordinary
The myth of great art is that it’s created through spurts of inspiration, genius, and epiphanies. This isn’t always the case. Rather, great art can evolve from what seems like very ordinary, average, rough drafts, often created during very ordinary moments. Not unlike an agile sprint or a lean startup, artists will then get feedback,…
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Why you should work on one thing at a time
I grasped one of the my important productivity insights when I worked at Xtreme Labs: the importance of doing one thing at a time. Our VP of Engineering, Farhan Thawar, was a proponent of “monotasking,” and he warned against multitasking and distraction. Professor Gloria Mark from the University of California, Irvine, told Fast Company that…
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How the U.S.A.’s first billionaire destroyed the myth of hard work (i.e., “hustle”)
The lazy, concentrated, approach to work that made John D. Rockefeller “I attribute my good condition to my almost reckless independence in determining for myself what to do and the rigid adhering to regulations which give me the maximum of rest and quiet and leisure, and I am being richly paid for it every day.” — John…
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Don’t wait until you feel more confident. Action comes first
There’s a quote often attributed to Henry Ford, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” Something like this might your mind as you watch as these other people, chin up, assured, relaxed, almost effortlessly do exactly what you wanted to do. The reason many of them are able to…