Joel Spolsky on the Key Insight
The key insight is to figure out the activity that the user is doing, and focus on making it easy to accomplish that activity.”
German Word For Naughty Knowledge
Fingerspitzengefühl… a great situational awareness, and the ability to respond most appropriately and tactfully.
You don’t get there with cosmetics, you get there by taking care of the details, by polishing and refining what you have. This is ultimately a matter of trained taste, or what German speakers call Fingerspitzengefühl (literally, “finger-tip-feeling”).”
George Saunders on the Artist & the Art
A work of art is something produced by a person, but is not that person — it is of her, but is not her. It’s a reach, really — the artist is trying to inhabit, temporarily, a more compact, distilled, efficient, wittier, more true-seeing, precise version of herself — one that she can’t replicate in so-called ‘real’ life, no matter how hard she tries. That’s why she writes: to try and briefly be more than she truly is.”
Paul Graham on Understanding the Problem
Perhaps there’s a rule here: perhaps you create wealth in proportion to how well you understand the problem you’re solving, and the problems you understand best are your own.
That’s just a theory. What’s not a theory is the converse: if you’re trying to solve problems you don’t understand, you’re hosed.”
Parker Palmer on Burnout
“Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess.”
Another way he puts it is this:
… violating my own nature in the name of nobility.
Powerful stuff.
And here’s another way he puts it in this short video:
In my own life at least, burnout was not about trying to give too much, it was about trying to give things that I didn’t really have to give. It involved what I came to think of as a ‘high artificial ethic’ about what I ought to be doing in the world rather than an ethic that grew up from my natural giftedness and my place in the ecosystem of my own life, where I could give what grew in me. When you give what grows then that crop replenishes itself, you don’t end up in that depletion of having too little to live on psychologically, spiritually, etc.
So, it’s a tricky question because one does not want to hold back. If you’re going to be in the world with the fulness of your heart, it’s hard to hold back. And yet there is some kind of way of holding yourself that is a hedge against this violence to self — which often results in violence to others as well, that’s another layer of this problem that we need to look at. If we’re doing violence to ourselves we’re almost always doing violence to others — to people close to us, friends, family, people who work with us or for us, and in some cases to the larger world of people who consume whatever it is we’re creating.
Stephen Pressfield on Customer Avatars
‘This might not work.’
These four words are what every artist and entrepreneur should be saying as he or she launches their new novel/zombie flick/videogame/Andalusian restaurant.
It might not work. Really. It might bomb big-time.
That’s the chance you and I have to take, if we want to get ahead of the curve. Ahead of the curve is where hits happen.
Ahead of the curve is where the Muse lives.
If we call ourselves artists or entrepreneurs, that’s where you and I have to live too.
Neil Strauss on the Three Drafts
Whatever you think of the two blokes having the chat, this is an insightful little number from Neil Strauss about the different drafts of a book/article/etc that he’ll write. (found in this conversation).
- First draft is for me. Just get it out.
- Second draft is for the reader. Focus, clarity, cutting out the darlings, etc.
- Third draft is for the haters. What objections will they bring that I can preemptively address?
Bruce Lee on Useful, Useless & You
Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
Parker Palmer on The Rosa Parks Moment
… they decide to live ‘divided no more.’ They decide no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about themselves that they hold deeply on the inside […] I call this the Rosa Parks moment.”
Read this book again. Especially if you’re 26-33 years old. It’s about these moments, about unfolding the crust and getting at what you’ve built over, what you were born with, what, if you look for it, is the True™ and Good™ vocation/career/job/work/stuff.
My Backstory — Interview on The Gently Mad
I had a talk with Adam Clark from The Gently Mad recently and I think you’ll enjoy it. It gets into my back story (and there’s a bonus episode where we get deep into the Jesus stuff).
I know I’m saying something good when my face gets hot.”
Adam was awesome at creating a safe kind of place for us to explore these thoughts with each other. It felt like a joint effort. I’m happy about that.
As to the content here you’ll pick up a few things:
- What it’s like to have your first business fail.
- Navigating the “blogworld” sleazery and the ways to do it better.
- The value of selling.
- I am mission and so can you.