"Inventing on Principle" | James Clear
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Highlights
- Ideas are very important to me. I think that bringing ideas into the world is one of the most important things that people do. And I think that great ideas, in the form of great art, stories, inventions, scientific theories, these things take on lives of their own, which give meaning to our lives as people. So, I think a lot about how people create ideas and how ideas grow. And in particular, what sorts of tools create a healthy environment for ideas to grow.
- Creators need an immediate connection to what they create. And what I mean by that is when you’re making something, if you make a change, or you make a decision, you need to see the effect of that immediately. There can’t be a delay, and there can’t be anything hidden. Creators have to be able to see what they’re doing.
- How would I ever have discovered that if I had to compile and run between every change? So much of art, so much of creation is discovery, and you can’t discover anything if you can’t see what you’re doing.
- I can make these changes as quickly as I think of them, and that is so important to the creative process. To be able to try ideas as you think of them. If there is any delay in that feedback loop, between thinking of something and seeing it, and building on it, then there is this whole world of ideas which will just never be. These are thoughts that we can’t think.
- Ideas start out tiny, weak and fragile. In order to develop and mature, ideas need an environment where the creator can nurture them. Kind of take care of them, feed them, and shape their growth. And to me, that’s what the principle of immediate connection is all about. And because ideas are so precious to me, when I see this principle violated, when I see ideas stillborn or stunted because their creator couldn’t see what they were doing, I feel that’s wrong.
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Two golden rules of information design: Show the data. Show comparisons.
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Why do we have these squiggly symbols in the first place? Why do they exist? They exist because they’re easy to draw with pencil on paper. This is not paper. So when you have a new medium, you have to rethink these things. You have to think how can this new medium allow us to have a more immediate connection to what we’re making. How can this new medium allow us to work in such a way that we can see what we’re doing.
- So the first thing that Larry did was that he recognized a wrong that had been unacknowledged in the culture. And the thing is, that’s how many great social changes began as well.
- So, you can choose this life. Or maybe it will end up choosing you. It might not happen right away. It can take time to find a principle because finding a principle is essentially a form of self-discovery, that you’re trying to figure out what your life is supposed to be about. What you want to stand for as a person.
- And that is a powerful principle because it gave him a new way of seeing the world. It divided the world in right and wrong in a fairly objective way. So, he could look at somebody selecting text and ask: Is this person in a mode? Yes or no?
- There are many ways to live your life. That’s maybe the most important thing you can realize in your life, is that every aspect of your life is a choice. But there are default choices. You can choose to sleepwalk through your life and accept the path that’s been laid out for you. You can choose to accept the world as it is. But you don’t have to. If there is something in the world you feel is a wrong and you have a vision for what a better world could be, you can find your guiding principle. And you can fight for a cause.