But how many of them changed their life plans — and cut their sleep to near zero, essentially inhaling food so as not to let eating interfere with work — to throw themselves into writing Basic for the Altair? How many defied their parents, dropped out of college and moved to Albuquerque to work with the Altair? How many had Basic for the Altair written, debugged and ready to ship before anyone else. Thousands of people could have done the same thing that Mr. Gates did, at the same time. But they didn’t.
—
From an essay in the New Tork Times by Jim Collins, What’s Luck Got to Do With It?
I’m thinking today about luck and other enigmatic forces in our creative lives - quantifiable, or not. So much of our lives depend on how we respond to the opportunities and challenges that we encounter. Do we just talk about doing something, or do we go ahead and do it, accepting that it might not turn out the way we’d planned?
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