Notes to Self

The meaning you give work determines its difficulty.

You don’t run out of ideas if you don’t run out of questions.

Work hard in silence. Let success be your noise.

The best way to anticipate the future is to design it.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Everytime you say yes you’re saying no to something else.

You have to spend as much time de-validating as you do validating.

The moment you become content is the moment you stop growing.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

The path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall—they are the real distorting prisms of human nature.

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

Do not offer to handle aspects of a project in which you cannot control the quality and outcome.

It is a leader whom stays composed, even in a crisis.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

When in doubt, take it out.

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

Do work worthy of your name.

Bring an extra shirt.

Be a scientist when you work, and a snake charmer when you present.

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Never mistake motion for action.

The opportunity lost by increasing the amount of blank space is gained back with enhanced attention on what remains. More white space means that less information is presented. In turn, proportionately more attention shall be paid to that which is made less available. When there is less, we appreciate everything much more.

The details are not the details. They make the design.