sometimes life squeezes out the best of us

At 12:50 David Rose says "My theory is that sometimes life squeezes out the best of us."

"Ideo, an innovative design company," 60 Minutes, 06 January 2013, youtu.be/GYkb6vfKMI4.

While ideas ultimately can be so powerful they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts.

“I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful,” Ive told the assembled mourners, “they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts.”

Jonathan Ive about Steve Jobs as quoted in Robert Sullivan, "A Rare Look at Design Genius Jony Ive: The Man Behind the Apple Watch," Vouge, 1 Oct 2014,
www.vogue.com/1415025/apple-design-genius-jonathan-ive via Robb Perry.

Lift

I shall never forget his plea, "Oh, give me one man who says, I can make it work." The difference between the critic and suggester of a better way may seem slight in words, but it looms large in life. What a leap between, "I see your error" to "I see a way that might make it better." Both point out the error. But one pushes down, the other lifts. The lifting takes the tougher mind.

Henry B. Eyring, BYU Commencement, 18 Aug 1972 as quoted in Robert I. Eaton & Henry J. Eyring, I Will Lead You Along: The Life of Henry B. Eyring, Deseret Book, 2013, p. 81.

Get the right story

For all the care you put into artistry , visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right.

ED Catmull, Amy Wallace, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Random House Publishing Group, Kindle Edition. 2014.

Technical understanding should be a core competency of any company

We need business leaders who have a respect for technical issues even if they don’t have technical backgrounds. In a lot of U.S. industries, including cars and even computers, many managers don’t think of technology as a core competency, and this attitude leads them to farm out technical issues. But we live in a technical society; technology is just fundamental to our way of life. Technical understanding should be a core competency of any company.

Ed Catmull, "Pleasing Wall Street is a Poor Excuse for Bad Decisions," Harvard Business Review, 20 Oct 2009,
blogs.hbr.org/2009/10/outsourcing-in-and-of-itself/

I don’t believe in a perfect process

We have had a substantial difficulty with every film that we made. That has included complete restarts. Toy Story 2 was a restart. Ratatouille was a restart. And The Good Dinosaur is a restart. In the past, because we were a little company, nobody paid attention or they didn’t know. It’s because Pixar is successful that now people are paying attention and saying, “Oh, what’s going on there?” What’s going on is what has always gone on: Ultimately, there’s a criterion whether the film is good enough and we don’t let the other stuff get in the way of it.

One thing I don’t believe in is the notion of a perfect process. Our goal isn’t to prevent all the problems; our goal is making good movies.

Ed Catmull as quoted in in David A. Price, "Managing Creativity: Lessons from Pixar and Disney Animation," Harvard Business Review, 9 Apr 2014, blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/managing-creativity-lessons-from-pixar-and-disney-animation/.

Be wrong as fast as you can

There is an alternative approach to being wrong as fast as you can. It is the notion that if you carefully think everything through, if you are meticulous and plan well and consider all possible outcomes, you are more likely to create a lasting product. But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them— if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line— well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work— things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal. Moreover, you cannot plan your way out of problems. While planning is very important, and we do a lot of it, there is only so much you can control in a creative environment. In general, I have found that people who pour their energy into thinking about an approach and insisting that it is too early to act are wrong just as often as people who dive in and work quickly. The overplanners just take longer to be wrong (and, when things inevitably go awry, are more crushed by the feeling that they have failed). There’s a corollary to this, as well: The more time you spend mapping out an approach, the more likely you are to get attached to it. The nonworking idea gets worn into your brain, like a rut in the mud. It can be difficult to get free of it and head in a different direction. Which, more often than not, is exactly what you must do.

Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, 8 Apr 2014, Random House Publishing Group, Kindle Edition, Kindle Locations 1801-1811.

Beautiful things don't ask for attention.

Sean O'Connell: They call the snow leopard the ghost cat. Never lets itself be seen.

Walter Mitty: Ghost cat.

Sean O'Connell: Beautiful things don't ask for attention.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) Quotes, IMDB, www.imdb.com/title/tt0359950/quotes.

How Google fixed its design process and started making beautiful apps

... art comes from the struggle ...

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.

- Henri Matisse

Opening quote in the film Between the Folds, 2010,
www.greenfusefilms.com/ or
www.pbs.org/independentlens/between-the-folds/ or
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJRBiIeFe7Q