How To Enjoy The Process

My entire philosophy of how I organize myself as a working painter can be summed up by something George Carlin said: “Just keep movin’ straight ahead. Every now and then you find yourself in a different place.”

You hear a lot in art school about how painters must continue to “grow” and “evolve”—but I think those are such bullshit words. There is... See more

“Why didn’t they simply do the perfect thing on the first attempt?”

The short answer is: that’s not how this works. Things are not linear or clean. We can only asymptote towards perfection through trial and error.

I wish when I was at my previous startups I had focused more on building and less on winning. Sure, I may not have done exactly what I had thought I wanted, but finding ways to love the process would’ve allowed for better outcomes anyway. What we want is such an abstract idea, built on a foundation of shifting sand, that it is pointless to try to... See more

We get excited about our smart idea; we race it to market; we expect the cavalry to arrive and make this easier. But the reality is that doing a handstand “takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you’re just going to end up quitting”—or, for the founders who endure, end up surprised by how... See more

To quote the always-brilliant Philip Kiely: “First you do X, then you make content about doing X, then you make content about that content… One day you realize you haven’t done X for six months. And there is only so much room for content at the highest levels of abstraction.”