An underrated way to succeed at anything is simply to be ten times better.
Everyone wants to have a unique idea or be a monopoly but you can just be ten times better instead. In a lot of areas, no one is really trying. The world is coated with a film of inertia.
Taste requires originality. It invokes an aspirational authenticity. Writer George Saunders calls this “achieving the iconic space,” and it’s what he’s after when he meets his creative writing students. “They arrive already wonderful. What we try to do over the next three years is help them achieve what I call their “iconic space” — the place from... See more
From Christopher Alexander foreword to Richard Gabriel's "Patterns Of Software":
In my life as an architect, I find that the single thing which inhibits young professionals, new students most severely, is their acceptance of standards that are too low. If I ask a student whether her design is as good as Chartres, she... See more