People get good gigs because they stand up....You don't get picked. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.

Every great company, brand, career has been built in exactly the same way: bit by bit, step by step, little by little.

If you set your bar at 'amazing' it's awfully difficult to start. Your first paragraph, sketch, formula, sample or concept isn't going to be amazing. Your tenth one might not be either. Confronted with the gap between your vision of perfect and the reality of what you've created, the easiest path is no path. Shrug. Admit defeat. Hit delete. One more reason to follow someone else and wait for instructions. Of course, the only path to amazing runs directly through not-yet-amazing. But not-yet-amazing is a great place to start, because that's where you are.

If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent.

The wettest, weirdest environment is human interaction. Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating-it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people.

If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you'll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job.

The minute there's a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.