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Anthony’s NotesA personal field guide
From the notebook

Ignore Everybody

Hugh MacLeod

Book Cover

Highlights

  • The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. (Location 89)
  • GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS. THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED. (Location 105)
  • Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing. (Location 129)
  • Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. Ninety percent of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina. (Location 134)
  • Your idea finally seems to be working, seems to be getting all sorts of traction, and all of a sudden you’ve got all these swarms of people trying to join the team, trying to get a piece of the action. And then as soon as they get a foothold inside the inner circle, you soon realize they never really understood your idea in the first place, they just want to be on the winning team. And the weirdest part is, they don’t seem to mind sabotaging your original idea that got them interested in the first place, in order to maintain their newfound social status. It’s probably the most bizarre bit of human behavior I’ve ever witnessed firsthand in business, and it’s amazingly common. (Location 185)
  • If your business plan depends on suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. (Location 193)
  • If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed. (Location 243)
  • Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb. (Location 297)
  • The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props. (Location 312)
  • There’s no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. (Location 319)
  • A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind. (Location 323)
  • All we can do is keep asking the question, “Is this a pillar?” about every aspect of our business, our craft, our reason for being alive, and go from there. The more we ask, the better we get at spotting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish. (Location 337)
    1. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. (Location 340)
  • pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it’s going to. (Location 364)
  • compare your inside with somebody else’s outside. (Location 376)
  • The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not. (Location 422)
  • The really good artists, the really successful entrepreneurs, figure out how to circumvent their limitations, figure out how to turn their strengths into weaknesses. (Location 530)
  • your product to make it more “commercial” will just make people like it less. (Location 567)
  • Nobody cares. Do it for yourself. (Location 579)
  • is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, screenplay, etc., especially if you haven’t finished it yet. And the ones who aren’t too busy you don’t want in your life anyway. (Location 580)
  • about “Commercial vs. Artistic” is a complete waste of time. (Location 584)
  • Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually. (Location 595)
  • neither should you fret too much about “writer’s block,” “artist’s block,” or whatever. If you’re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something. (Location 609)
  • You have to find your own shtick. (Location 615)
  • your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. It’s that simple. (Location 628)
  • best way to get approval is not to need it. (Location 641)
  • is never given. Power is taken. (Location 653)
  • Remain frugal. (Location 691)
  • of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice. (Location 702)
  • your work to age with you. (Location 704)
  • A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.” (Location 710)
  • biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there. (Location 718)
  • obscurity while it lasts. (Location 745)