do less to do more
like Jonny Ive said, “what have you said no to today?” focus is the hardest thing in the world
do less to do more
So unless we’re locked up in a room with only a piano and a pile of Tolstoy, or we partake in the fictional tradition of a Depth Year, we need to find a way to put up our own limits. When we give ourselves fewer places to dig, we go deeper, and what we uncover is more rare and valuable than the usual stuff near the surface.
David Cain • Go Deeper, Not Wider
The greatest lie I ever told myself was that expertise would set me free. It's a peculiar form of self-deception, this notion that mastery somehow equals liberation. I've spent the better part of my life accumulating knowledge like a magpie hoarding bottle caps, only to discover that knowing exactly what I'm doing has become the intellectual
... See moreHowever, until I got into my 30s, my mindset was that there were all sorts of other wonderful things going on. I'd love to be polymathic; I was reading about the latest in many different sciences, but I was going to focus on Microsoft. You know, so for my 20s, I was monomaniacal. I did not read broadly. I definitely intimidated my competitors. My
... See moreCHM Live | Bill Gates and Patrick Collison: In Conversation at CHM
# the nightmare bicycle
imo, the most important idea in product design is to avoid the "nightmare bicycle".
imagine a bicycle where the product manager said "people don't get math so we can't have numbered gears - we need to have labeled buttons for gravel mode, downhill mode,... See more
“People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing: refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.” ➪ Leo Tolstoy
I've spent the better part of my life accumulating knowledge like a magpie hoarding bottle caps, only to discover that knowing exactly what I'm doing has become the intellectual equivalent of a straitjacket.
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Leland Maschmeyer