loving the process

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push... See more

The moat of low status is one of my favorite concepts, courtesy of my husband Sasha. The idea is that making changes in your life, especially when learning new skill sets, requires you to cross a moat of low status, a period of time where you are actually bad at the thing or fail to know things that are obvious to other people.

Listen to what Shannon said about hanging out with the tricksters and the rascals and the artists — make sure to stay with those who are in on the joke, the delight, the wild creativity of this place.

The thing that no one ever tells you about your calling is that it’s boring. Oh, everything is interesting if you’re interested… shut up. Yes, it will be exhilarating and fun and fluid and and natural and meaningful. It will also be tedious. It will hurt. You will encounter obstacle after obstacle until you feel like you’re in a video game with... See more

The reality is that you will build many worlds throughout your lifetime. Look how many you have built already, only to walk away from them, or have them dismantled, or watch them collapse without your permission. You will play many roles, you will be many people, you will try on a lot of costumes, you will exert an enormous amount of energy to put

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Too often, we think of notebooks as a way-station: a necessary stop en-route to the perfected, polished work of art. But what if the notebook is the work of art? What if the process of taking notes is the point?