Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian, Innovator, Micromanager

If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.

Seinfeld: It’s very important to know what you don’t like. A big part of innovation is saying, “You know what I’m really sick of?” For me, that was talk shows where music plays, somebody walks out to a desk, shakes hands with the host, and sits down. 

Jerry Seinfeld started performing stand-up comedy in 1976. Since then and to this day, every day he sits with a yellow legal pad and writes jokes. Given that he’s been honing his craft for 47 years, he was asked, “How do you know a joke is going to work on stage?” Seinfeld said, "You don’t." “You just trust yourself?” the interviewer asked. “No you... See more

Jerry Seinfeld talking with Howard Stern on finding the pain you're comfortable with:

"Seinfeld: I'm never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I'm thinking, could I do something with that?

Howard Stern: That, to me, sounds torturous.

Seinfeld: Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with."

“There’s nothing I revile quite as much as a dilettante,” Seinfeld told GQ , “ I don’t like doing something to a mediocre level.” Escaping mediocrity requires focus. “You have to dedicate yourself to these great things,” he added. “And I don’t believe in being good at a lot of things—or even more than one.”

Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- l... See more