Greatness

A great lil story from the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was

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"It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set." —Josh Waitzkin Mastery of basics, not secret techniques, makes legends. Look at Roger Gracie's BJJ dominance—leverage and positioning. Jiro... See more

When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the... See more

Love this definition of art, from Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

Art is anything you can do well, anything you can do with quality, anything where there are options for doing it well or poorly. And there are very few things in this world that don't have options for doing it well or poorly. So you can make an art

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