Thanks to Project Sidewalk who created this small but perfectly formed work of genius … and Hugh McLeod who pointed me to it.
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I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention – invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
~ Agatha Christie
What a fantastic quote. Long live laziness! Embrace idleness!
Come on – you know, I know, we all know that we’re all working too hard. (I am, at any rate).
As if busy-ness was something to be proud of. I ask you: what a dubious badge of honour THAT is!
=> What would you stop doing if you had to stop being Busy?
=> How is being busy keeping you safe? Keeping you small? Keeping you doing Good Work not Great Work?
=> What’s the easiest thing you could do right now?
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Tom Jones … for those that don’t know him, hip Welsh crooner famous for “What’s New Pussycat” … and a bunch of other classics.
This from a recent interview:
“What I like about that song is that I walk on and ‘make my memories’. I’m still making my memories, I’m not just thinking of old memories.”
Forget “strategic importance” and forget “impact on the world” for a moment.
It’s about what memories you’re creating. For you.
That’s truly one measure of Great Work.
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What are you measuring?
More importantly – what does what you’re measuring tell you?
And just as importantly, what does what you’re NOT measuring tell you?
Speaking to a friend Sherry Lowry at the recent OD Network Conference, she told me that Austin Texas bought on average 28 books per year per person. The national average in the US? 5.
I love that as an eclectic metric that tells me a great deal about what I’d value in a place to live.
As you think about your own quest for Great Work, what do you measure? What don’t you measure?
As you think about your team’s quest for Great Work, what do you measure? What don’t you measure?
PS – Here are other “places I want to live” metrics I’d consider:
- How many miles of highway are there? How many kilometers of cycle paths?
- How many types of cheese are available?
- How many languages are spoken?
What ones have I missed?
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I picked up the most recent edition of Dwell, a great architect and design magazine that makes my aspirational heart beat as I look at the wonderful, eco-friendly, modernist (and often pre-fabricated) houses they feature.
The editorial riffed on Bernard Rudofsky’s 1965 book The Kimono Mind and offered this quote:
“Just as we have exterminated feebler races by meerely overliving them in monopolizing and absorbing, almost without conscious effort, everyting necessary to their happiness – so we ourselves be exterminated at last by races capable of underliving us, of monopolizing all our necessities; races more patient, more self-denying, more fertile, and much less expensive for nature to support.”
Seth Godin makes a similar point here about the difference between being Big and Small – and just what advantages Small can give you.
It feels like there’s a strong correlation between Good Work and Great Work.
Good Work might involve overliving … expanding to do the daily work, becoming habitual and perhaps causal in what you do and how you do it.
Great Work might flourish through underliving, where you need to get to the essential of what matters, you need to use less to do more, you need to say No.
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