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3 IDEAS FROM ME

I.

If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. All you need is patience.


II.

How to see opportunities others miss:

1) Study a totally different field, then return to the original problem. Apply insights from other domains.

2) Invert the problem. Try to achieve the opposite.

3) Talk to hyper-creative people. Their thinking will rub off.


III.

One form of originality is creation. Another form is synthesis.

People often focus so much on creating new ideas that they overlook the value of synthesizing ideas from different sources.

Innovation usually mean connecting previously unconnected concepts.

2 QUOTES FROM OTHERS

I.

The scientist, astronomer, and author, Carl Sagan, on the magic of books:

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Source: Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory


II.

The cellist, composer, and conductor, Pablo Casals, on being unique:

“Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you… You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work—we must all work—to make this world worthy of its children.”

Source: Joys and Sorrows: Reflections by Pablo Casals, page 295

1 QUESTION FOR YOU

If someone could only see my actions and not hear my words, what would they say are my priorities?

Until next week,

James Clear
Author of the million-copy bestseller, Atomic Habits
Creator of the Habit Journal

P.S. Save this feeling.

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