The bottleneck is never code or creativity; it's lack of clarity. Scott Berkun More Quotes by Scott Berkun More Quotes From Scott Berkun Most people doubt online meeting scan work, but they somehow overlook that most in person meetings don't work either. Scott Berkun online doubt people The temptation many creative people I know have is to strive for popularity. To make, do, and say things that other people like in the hopes of pleasing them. This motivation is nice. And sometimes the end result is good. But often what happens in trying so hard to please other people, especially many other people, the result is mediocre. Scott Berkun motivation nice people It’s not the fear of writing that blocks people, it’s fear of not writing well; something quite different. Scott Berkun block writing people My intent is simply to know my material so well that I'm very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is the goal. Scott Berkun confidence goal perfection Innovative ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel. If you forget people’s concerns and feelings when you present an innovation, or neglect to understand their perspectives in your design, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Scott Berkun perspective people ideas Experiment is the expected failure to deliberately learn something. Scott Berkun experiments expected Part of the challenge of innovation is coming up with the problem to solve, not just its solution. Scott Berkun innovation problem challenges People tell me this is obvious. But it's ok to be obvious. Knowing and doing are different. Many people know many obvious things they completely fail to do, despite their knowledge. Scott Berkun obvious-things knowing people Commit yourself to taking enough risks that you will fail some of the time. If you're not failing, we're not doing something sufficiently difficult or creative. Scott Berkun failing risk creative Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world. Scott Berkun together fun ideas All great tasks test our motivation. It's easy to court ideas over beers and change the world with napkin sketches, but like most things taken home from bars, new challenges arise the next day. It's in the morning light when work begins, and grand ideas (or barroom conquests) lose their luster. To do interesting things requires work and it's no surprise we abandon demanding passions for simpler, easier, more predictable things. Scott Berkun motivation taken morning It's safe to assume that no matter where you stand, someone would be happy to be in your shoes, just as you'd be happy to be in someone else's. Scott Berkun shoes safe would-be There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn’t one. Scott Berkun writing book thinking People who truly have control over time always have some in their pocket to give to someone in need. A sense of priorities drives their use of time and it can shift away from the ordinary work that’s easy to justify, in favor of the more ethereal, deeper things that are harder to justify. They protect their time from trivia and idiocy; these people are time rich. They provide themselves with a surplus of time. They might seem to idle, or relax more often than the rest, but that just might be a sign of their mastery, not their incompetence. Scott Berkun priorities giving people For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong. Scott Berkun strong kings song Innovation is significant positive change. Scott Berkun positive-change significant innovation I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be useful, I want to be good, and I want to sound like myself. Trying to be perfect gets in the way of all three. Scott Berkun perfect want trying No one has died from giving a bad presentation. Well, at least one person did, President William Henry Harrison, but he developed pneumonia after giving the longest inaugural address in U.S. history. The easy lesson from his story: keep it short, or you might die. Scott Berkun pneumonia president giving It's only through effort that we learn what an idea actually is, and if our passion for it will last or fade. There is no shame in failure - all makers fail. But it's hard to respect someone who never tries, even once, to do something good that's always on their mind. If you're worried about how good your idea is, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Scott Berkun passion worry ideas If you'd like to be good at something, the first thing to out the window is the notion of perfection. Scott Berkun perfection window firsts
