flâneur

Michael DeMarco

3 followers · 7 following · 286 views

on the atlas — 2

highlights — 10

  • Have the confidence to cut. Don't keep something that doesn't fit just because you're proud of it, or because it cost you a lot of effort.
    How to Do Great Work
  • But any energy that goes into how you seem comes out of being good. That's one reason nerds have an advantage in doing great work: they expend little effort on seeming anything. In fact that's basically the definition of a nerd.
    How to Do Great Work
  • So just do the work and your identity will take care of itself.
    How to Do Great Work
  • That's the key: consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own. It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your part of it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Try to finish what you start, though, even if it turns out to be more work than you expected. Finishing things is not just an exercise in tidiness or self-discipline. In many projects a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Lots of great things began with someone saying "How hard could it be?"
    How to Do Great Work
  • If you're making something for people, make sure it's something they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something you yourself want. Write the story you want to read; build the tool you want to use.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Great work often has a tincture of strangeness.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Starting [at a young age] he’s read everything that he could find about business. The subject that interests him, he’s read newspapers, biographies, trade press. He went over to his grandfather who was a grocer and he read the progressive grocer magazine, and he read articles on how to stock a meat department... What he’s really done is he’s created this immense vertical filing cabinet in his brain of layers and layers and layers of files of information that he can draw back on now for more than 70 years worth of data. placeholder
    Curius / Onboarding