owltastic

Sep 23, 2011

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move."

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Quote Vadis - Quotes, Inspiration, Wisdom (“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel…)

tags / quote / travel

Sep 10, 2011

"This is an important lesson to remember when you’re having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year: things will change. You won’t feel this way forever. Sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can’t feel real joy unless you know what it means to fail.
— Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside"

Curly Braces - Blog - Sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most.

tags / quote / books / lessons / wisdom

Sep 7, 2011

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The truth is that perfection is impossible and “good enough” is good enough. I need to lower the standards I have for my own work. But as a designer, this task is insurmountably difficult. It feels like defeat. It’s a tacit admission that I am not good enough to create things that meet the same level of quality that I demand from others when I evaluate creative work. My “taste” exceeds my own ability.

It’s interesting that the source of my internal battle lies buried in something as innocuous as “taste”. For most people, taste is just the basis of opinion. It describes the point at which something flips from being “not good enough” to “ok, decent”. But for creative people, it’s something different. Taste is everything. It is what drives us. It is the definition of success, the ceiling of what is possible, and the source of everlasting internal frustration. Being creative is a battle fought over the slow conversion of a mere idea into something tangible that you think is great. The question is: When do you stop the conversion process?

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The gap Dustin Curtis

tags / quote / productivity / article / design / creativity / writing

Dec 2, 2010

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

The Happiness Project: “I Have Zero Tolerance for Self-Inflicted Drama.”

tags / happiness / quote

May 30, 2010

"To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time."

Leonard Bernstein | Quotes on Design

tags / quote / wisdom / advice

May 12, 2010

"This dance, this particular proton dance, will never come again. This tune we’re too busy to hear will not be played again. Never forget to be thankful for your life."

Life is Beautiful – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

tags / Quote / wisdom / writing / zeldman

Sep 21, 2009

ISO50 - The Blog of Scott Hansen » Ira Glass on the Creative Process

tags / video / inspiration / quote 1

Ira Glass on Storytelling

The first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good — it’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.

And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. We knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing to do is — everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.

via ISO50

tags / quote / creativity / inspiration / web design