When you’re at the beginning, don’t obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look a lot different once you get there. Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving.
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Switch by Chip & Dan Heath
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The way I understand gifts is that the giver must make a sacrifice, create an uneven exchange, bring himself closer to the recipient, create change and do it all with the right spirit. To do anything less might be smart commerce, but it doesn’t rise to the magical level of the gift. A day’s work for a day’s pay is the win/lose mantra of the industrial era. More modern is to view a day’s work as a chance to generate gifts that last.
In everything you do, it’s possible to be an artist, at least a little bit. Not on demand, not in the same way each time, and not for everyone. But if you’re willing to suspend your selfish impulses, you can give a gift to your customer or boss or coworker or a passerby. And the gift is as much for you as it is for the recipient.
Defending mediocrity is exhausting.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
