3-2-1: Letting bad ideas die, the beauty of autumn, and the endless nature of craftsmanship

Happy 3-2-1 Thursday,

Here are 3 ideas, 2 quotes, and 1 question to consider this week...

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I.

"Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones.

The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared.

Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation."

​II.

"Everything is an oversimplification. Reality is messy and complex.

The question is whether it is a useful simplification.

Know the limitations of an idea and you can apply it to great effect—despite the messiness of reality."

(Share this on Twitter)​

III.

"We often make choices based on immediate outcomes. What can I do to experience a little joy in the next 30 minutes? What can I accomplish in the next hour?

But if you always expect to get a little bit of reward for a little bit of effort, then you often overlook actions that lead to greater payoffs down the road. The relationship between input and output is rarely linear.

The course of action that could provide greater happiness, meaning, or satisfaction in the long run may not make you happy in the next 30 minutes."

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I.

Inventor and writer Lin Yutang on the beauty of autumn:

"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death."

Source: My Country and My People​

​II.

Painter Arshile Gorky on the endless nature of craftsmanship:

"I don't like that word 'finish'. When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while.

I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out. Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to – because I like to change my mind so often.

The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting."

Source: Movements in Art Since 1945​

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What is the biggest non-work related contribution you can make today?

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Until next week,

James Clear
​Author of the #1 worldwide bestseller, Atomic Habits​
Creator of the Habit Journal​

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p.s. The lost brother of Socrates.

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