Category Archives: Quotes

Chris Anderson on work and balance

Here are two nice quotes from Chris Anderson, from a recent post by Hugh McLeod:

On balance:

“Balance is a distant goal. In the meantime, I delegate,
work all the time, hardly sleep, totally ignore politics, sports and
pop culture, neglect my family too much and probably don’t do any of
my jobs as well as I could. But these are exciting days, and if ever
these was a time to be overextended this is it.”

On advice to school leavers:

“Don’t wait to be given a job to do something cool.”

Read the whole interview.

Previous posts featuring Hugh McLeod cartoons…

Books by Chris Anderson from Fishpond:

Lots in the window…

Here is a quote that I saw on the wall of a tea house half way up the Himalayas when I was in Nepal recently

“Lots in the window, nothing in the room”

It’s been bubbling in the back of my mind ever since.

It’s one of those quotes that cuts a little close to the bone and makes me feel like I should be doing more than I am.

Do with it what you will.

Have a great Christmas!

Too clever

Jason from 37signals last week posted one of my favourite quotes about complexity, and specifically complex systems:

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”

John Gall, from his book Systematics

Here is another along the same lines:

“There are two ways of constructing software; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.”

C. A. R. Hoare, the inventor of the Quicksort algorithm

And, why do we think complexity is desirable in the first place?

“People often misinterpret complexity as sophistication”

Niklaus Wirth, the father of Pascal

Are you trying to be too clever?

No news is good news

I’m spending next week offline.

No email. No RSS. No blogging.

It will be interesting to see how it goes.

I’ll let you know this time next Sunday.

In the meantime, here’s a good story from Sir Ken Robinson’s book “Out Of Our Minds“:

“A well known British journalist was reminiscing about his early days in radio news. He joined the BBC in the 1930s at a time when there was no regular news bulletin. In his first week, a bulletin was scheduled and he arrived at the studio to watch it being broadcast. The presenter sat at the microphone and waited until the time signal had finished. He then announced sombrely: ‘This is the BBC Home Service from London. There is no news’. The view of the times was that news would be broadcast if anything happened to warrant it.”

I didn’t realise it until now, but less is nostalgic.

Sir Ed

Edmund Hillary

New Zealanders everywhere have, hopefully, taken some time today to reflect on the life of Sir Edmund Hillary.

I watched the funeral on TV this morning and tried to explain the significance to my young son. But he’s only 3 and didn’t really understand.

He was a legend, no argument about that.

He climbed his Everest (which just happened to be the actual Everest) at the age of 35.

And, after that he got on with the next thing.

This quote from Peter Hillary’s eulogy to his dad will stick in my head (from memory, so please excuse me if I don’t have the wording exactly right):

“Don’t wait for great things to happen to you, or else you might be waiting a very long time.”

Winning

A great quote from Chris Rattue from NZ Herald over the weekend, in a mock Q&A about the Rugby World Cup:

“Why are Australia so confident about their chances?
Gary, Steelers Country.

It’s a smokescreen, Gary. Deep down, they are an insecure lot, but they hide it with bravado and by winning a lot of things.”

Too true!

Forever young

Here’s a nice reminder about the power of not knowing any better …

“You tend to lose important resources when you get older – your friends and your naivete. You no longer get the benefit of having all of your friends do the homework for you. You no longer get the benefit of trying new stuff because you don’t know any better.”

From: The most important assets you lose when you’re over 30

This should give pause to anybody who doesn’t understand the attraction of facebook and struggles to get excited about registering for another social networking site (me).

Or, those who insist that they have no reason to upgrade to Windows Vista, and that Windows XP is good enough, without even bothering to spend some time playing with it (you know who you are).

Perhaps those under 30 just spend less time reminiscing?

Whatever makes you nervous

“Here’s Michael Jordan’s move on the golf course: Some guy in the group asks if Jordan wants to play for money, Jordan says of course, the guy asks how much, and Jordan says, ‘Whatever makes you nervous.’ Works every time.”

From: Steve Rosenbloom

:-)

Is Computer Science dead?

Like Luke Welling, I suspect that reports of the death of Computer Science has been greatly exaggerated.

“The death of computer science was a fairy tale in 1987, and 20 years later it is still a fairy tale. More powerful computers are not replacing programmers any more than calculators are replacing accountants or power tools are replacing carpenters.”

Read the full post.

Less is more

Set Godin has a great post today.

Here is a taste:

“As long as there’s wiggle room, our desire for more will trump peer pressure to do less. ‘Fight global warming’ is a fine slogan, except it’s meaningless. That’s like dieters everywhere shouting, ‘eat less’ while they stand in line to get bleu cheese dressing from the salad bar.

As a marketer, my best advice is this: let’s figure out how to turn this into a battle to do more, not less. Example one: require all new cars to have, right next to the speedometer, a mileage meter. And put the same number on an LCD display on the rear bumper. Once there’s an arms race to see who can have the highest number, we’re on the right track.”

Go read the whole post.

Then, think: how are you encouraging your customers to do what you’d like them to do?