J. K. Rowling spins a different kind of magic

“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and began directing all my energy into the only work that mattered to me. Had I already succeeded in anything else, I would have never found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive, I had a daughter who I adored, I had an old typewriter, and a big idea, and so, rock bottom became the foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

J. K. Rowling choses to talk about the benefits of failure and the power of imagination in her commencement speech at Harvard. Read the rest of this entry »


Entrepreneurial Judgment

Quote of the day on Entrepreneurial Judgment by Marc (pmarca),

You’d better not have a lot of doubts about what you are doing because everyone else will, and if you do too, you’ll probably give up.

Of course, an entrepreneur’s doubt avoidance is only a plus right up to the point where it becomes pigheaded stubbornness that interferes with her ability to see reality, particularly when a strategy is not working. Read the rest of this entry »


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