BETTER IS BETTER THAN MORE

Wise words from wise, wise Seth (Italics added for emphasis):

"The restaurant makes the menu longer instead of figuring out how to make even one dish worth traveling across town for. We add many slides to our presentation before figuring out how to utter a single sentence that will give the people in the room chills or make them think. We confuse variety and range with quality.

Practice is not the answer here. Practice is the 10,000 hours thing, practice alone doesn't produce work that matters. No, that only comes from caring. From caring enough to leap, to bleed for the art, to go out on the ledge, where it's dangerous. When we care enough, we raise the bar, not just for ourselves, but for our customer, our audience and our partners.

It's obvious, then, why I don't play the clarinet any more. I don't care enough, can't work hard enough, don't have the guts to put that work into the world. This is the best reason to stop playing, and it opens the door to go find something you care enough to make matter instead. 

The cop-out would be to play the clarinet just a little, to add one more thing to my list of mediocre. As Jony Ive said, "We did it because we cared, because when you realize how well you can make something, falling short, whether seen or not, feels like failure."

It's much easier to add some features, increase your network, get some itemized tasks done. Who wants to feel failure?

We opt for more instead of better.

But better is better than more."

What a wordsmith.

THIS IS A GOOD QUOTE

"Be kinder than necessary. You never know what someone is going through."

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

I read a quote somewhere that said "You are what you eat".

Okay, I am a pistachio-peanut.

Last week I would have said I was a watermelon. (During the past month I probably ate upwards of 10 whole watermelons. It was to the point where mum would worry about leaving me home alone if there was a watermelon in the fridge. I am sort of starting to get over them now).

Yesterday, my inner-nut-munching-monster surfaced again and I went on a pistachio-cracking-and-munching rampage. Today I cleared my way through a whole cup of peanuts. Dammit.

I just hope my dry-roasted almond addiction doesn't return.
I don't want to be a dry-roasted almond.

I NEEDED THESE QUOTES

I've been sulking for the last few weeks because of something that happened – something I could say was a "failure". I've been really stressed out about it and it lowered my self-esteem and confidence quite a lot. But then magically, with perfect timing, a friend brought up these quotes:


“Don’t sit around waiting for a yes that will never come. It’s better to get to a no sooner rather than later, so you can put your energy into opportunities with a higher likelihood of success... If you aren’t failing sometimes, then you are probably aren’t taking enough risks.” - Dr. Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program

"If you're not worrying that something you're making will come out badly, or that you won't be able to understand something you're studying, then it isn't hard enough." - Paul Graham, Co-founder of Y Combinator