Ever feel like you’re wasting more time tweaking your time management tools than actually doing things? We know we have. Friend of Lifehacker and author of Design for Hackers David Kadavy succinctly articulates the problem.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is talking in Sydney today about his life and philosophy. His history at Apple is a familiar one to many geeks, but the principle by which he organises his life is worth noting even if you’re too young to remember a time when the Apple II was the computer to beat.
This quotation comes from business magnate Richard Branson, who has certainly seen his share of business opportunities. When we want something, we can sometimes end up with a laser-like focus on that thing that distracts us from other possibilities. Opportunities definitely fall into that category.
“Nothing destroys a good idea faster than a mandatory consensus. The lowest common denominator is never a high standard.”
“Ripeness is all” is a line in Shakespeare’s King Lear: “Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.” It speaks to being ready for inevitable death, but also, as children’s book author Maurice Sendak explains, savouring your life and making the most of every moment until the end.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” ~ Steve Jobs
Creative thinking is not synonymous with safe thinking, yet we forget to take risks when trying to come up with truly great ideas. This is something that Albert Einstein, the originator of this quote, is famous for understanding. If you neglect to entertain absurdity, you’re ruling out many potentially great ideas. Consider everything weird.
We all want to have original ideas, but when you’re surrounded by similarity it isn’t exactly easy to come up with them. Some of the best ideas we have for posts don’t come from internal brainstorming, but from experiences with non-Lifehacker-types in our own lives.
Deadlines are stressful for most of us, but they do serve their purpose in forcing us into action. Without them, who knows how many great products, works of art and plain old everyday projects wouldn’t exist.
Robert Swan was the first man to walk to both the South and North Poles. He gave the keynote speech at last week’s Cisco Live conference in Melbourne, and it was chock-full of pithy observations on how to motivate and inspire yourself.