Greatness
exploring the foundations of quality and the currents that fight against mediocrity
sari and
Greatness
- “The techniques that we use, they’re not a big secret. It’s just about making an effort and repeating the same thing every day.”
- Jiro repeats the same routine every day
- He even gets on the train from the same position
- He dislikes holidays and thinks they’re too long
- He wants to get back to work
- This routine is unthinkable for normal people
Jiro Ono: Simplicity Is The Ultimate Advantage | Founders Podcast with David Senra (#397) • Podcast Notes
Jiro dreams of sushi. Reminds me of “the mundanity of excellence”
I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.
Poetry and Ambition
One way to aim high is to try to make something that people will care about in a hundred years. Not because their opinions matter more than your contemporaries', but because something that still seems good in a hundred years is more likely to be genuinely good.
Paul Graham • How to Do Great Work
Patrick Collison on Stripe:
“My intuition is that more of Stripe success than one would think is down to the fact that people like beautiful things and for rational reasons.
Because, what does a beautiful thing tell you? It tells you the person who made it really cared, and you can observe... See more
I asked Kelly about the tradeoffs of focusing on a single thing if you want to be great (which is what I had been getting at before). “Greatness is overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk.”