I read this How to Lead a Creative Life article over at Fast.Co, after pointed out by John Maeda’s post. Here’s a quote – also my favorite from the bunch – from Joichi Ito, director of MIT Media Lab:

The Japanese government once asked me to be on a committee about taxes and information technology. The first thing I said was, ‘Let’s figure out a way to use resources more efficiently to lower taxes.’ And they said, ‘No, no, no—this committee is about using computers to collect more tax.’ So I asked, ‘How do we reduce costs?’ And they said, ‘Oh, there’s no committee for that.’ [Laughs] That’s the problem with large organizations. They create roles and constraints, and sometimes people forget why they’re there.

Read the article it’s a good read. There’s one from David Karp of Tumblr.

• “Don’t think your way to an answer. Discover your way to an answer.”

• “Your first pass doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be directionally correct.”

• “Unless you are generating new data or generating new insights, you won’t be doing something differently.”

• “If you don’t know enough, do it in a way that is small and unobtrusive as a pilot.”

• “Organizations throw their own obstacles in the way.”

• “Organizations are nested. Each nest deals with the problems appropriate to their own boundaries. When a problem crosses boundaries of a nest, there’s a need to move up in the hierarchy of the nests … or else a need to change the boundaries of a nest.”

• “See the problem. Run the experiments. Validate the data.”

• “Identify the problem. Create Experiments. Test the solutions.” (this was a refrain)

• “Knowledge gets shared through communities with shared interests.”

Mr. Jeffrey Zeldman:

The first thing I got about the web was its ability to empower the maker. The year was 1995, and I was tinkering at my first website. The medium was raw and ugly, like a forceps baby; yet even in its blind, howling state, it made me a writer, a designer, and a publisher — ambitions which had eluded me during more than a decade of underachieving desert wanderings.

In line with Ira Glass’ opinion, it’s gonna take a while:

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this.

A transcript from this video (via Daring Fireball). Perseverance will pays-off.

robynchell:

(courtesy of Brock Davis‘ Make Something Cool Every Day 2009)