As we’ll see, the greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door.
How can I create something that critics will criticize?
Why is Nigerian spam so sloppy? If you’ve gotten an email from a prince offering to split millions of dollars with you, you may have noticed all the misspellings and other telltale clues that it can’t possibly be real.
If you’re going to quit, quit before you start. Reject the system. Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world. Average.
Commit to the frightening work of flying blind.
The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is too high.
A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters.
The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That’s why graceful is in such demand.
It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle. When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.
Then a deadline arrives and you have to cut it short. Is shipping that important? I think it is. I think the discipline of shipping is essential in the long-term path to becoming indispensable.
That’s it – three steps: motivate, connect, and leverage.
The essence of political change is almost always cultural change, and the culture changes horizontally. Person to person. Us to us.
The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship.
Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.
Reality is the best reassurance of all.
We’re extremely adroit at hiding our fear. Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we’re afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.
The obvious winners are the mid-sized and smaller companies looking to increase market share. These are the companies that have nothing to lose, but more important, they realize that they have a lot to gain by changing the rules of the game.
Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.
Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even criticized.
A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist.