To invent something you have to be removed from the world. In order to have liberty to imagine something better, you need to step outside for a while.
Bruce MauLove your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
Bruce MauToday is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
Bruce MauWhen everything is connected to everything else, for better or for worse, everything matters.
Bruce MauWhat is the focus of the new image infrastructure? Attention. It's all designed for capturing, tracking, quantifying, manipulating, holding, buying, selling and controlling attention.
Bruce MauDon't clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can't see tonight.
Bruce MauImitate. Donโt be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable.
Bruce MauWhen the outcome drives the process we will only ever go where we've already been. If process drives the outcome we may not know where we're going, but we will know we want to be there.
Bruce MauNo longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes.
Bruce MauFor me, sensibility is the location of talent. Sensibility comes first because only with the right kind of sensibility is talent useful. I've met many people who are extraordinarily talented but have no capacity to go outside of themselves or their field. I love those people, but they would not succeed in our culture.
Bruce MauI'm interested in the moment when two objects collide and generate a third. The third object is where the interesting work is.
Bruce MauMake your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
Bruce MauYou have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you: You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth are the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Bruce Mau