Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Call it what you want: persistence, confidence, stubbornness, or, as we’ll christen it tonight, the 10% Prick rule, but producing that one great work may very well require it. The first 90%, I think, is the swirl of factors–people you’ve met, things you’ve learned, places you’ve gone, jobs you’ve held–that’s brought you to wherever you are.

That final 10% gives you the edge, though it may make you seem slightly like a schmuck. Slightly being the operative word here, because anything more than 10% transforms you into a complete jackass. But it’s this idea of uncompromising forward movement. Circumstance may seize you and naysayers may buffet you from all sides, and yet you follow your own Polaris, carried on by the strength of your convictions.

This is all very abstract, I know, but I warned you we’d be visiting these here parts. The question we’re answering, once again, is how do you create a great work? How do you write a profound song, pen the great American novel, draft a speech that resonates through time, or build that compelling business plan? It comes easily to the geniuses. They just do it, very likely without asking these questions, but for the rest of us it’s a matter of working backwards, kinda a reverse engineering of greatness. And this is one small piece of it.