18.
FORGET ABOUT EFFICIENCY, CARE ABOUT THE IDEA

Ideas are not widgets. They’re not stamped out by a punch press, identical in size and shape and weight.

Each idea is a pearl — unique and fragile and luminous. And until an idea is put into action, until you see it working in the marketplace or the production line or schoolroom or the workplace, who knows what one is worth?

Their production should not be judged the way you judge a widget’s either; for if you cannot immediately judge the worth of an idea, how can you judge the efficiency of the method you use to produce it?

So don’t worry about efficiency.

What difference does it make if it takes ten times longer to come up with one idea than it does another? Or if one person comes up with twice as many ideas as another? Of if some people get ideas by looking out the window, others by working on a computer, and still others by reading comic books?

Don’t worry about the when or the where or the how much or the how many.

Worry about the what — the idea.