An imperial crown cannot be one continued diamond; the gems must be held together by some less valuable matter.
—Dr. Johnstone, The Lives of the Poets, gathered while reading The Literary Wasteland by Darren Allen.
Similarly in the composition of a painting, only some areas can be focal points, because if every part of the painting is flooded with details that attract your attention, then nothing sticks out from the rest.
One major difference I see from people who know their craft from those who don't is that the former can distill the most important things you need to focus on in only a few points, whereas the latter tend to give you massive lists of guidelines and principles with no prioritization whatsoever. Reality is not uniform, it is structured in a way that you can focus on 20% of the stuff and get 80% of the results. 14
In fact what I often see are people who would benefit from trying to do less things. Have less projects, learn less stuff, prune the to-do list, and be less ambitious, 15 but focus more on what you already know and have. In our constantly distracted environments, you get a lot more from being able to focus on less, rather than learning more scattered information.
7 See again Darren Allen on the Technological System.
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2024-08-25