Stick like hell When the Wizard of Menlo Park called invention 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration, he was speaking not only about the creative act of inventing but also about the whole inventive process needed to bring more than intellectual success. Edison warned against discouragement during the perspiration phase in the following way, reminding us that we get things to work by the successive removal of bugs: Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! Any other bright-minded fellow can accomplish just as much of he will stick like hell and remember nothing that's any good works by itself. You've got to make the damn thing work!...I failed my way to success. Thomas Edison, The Evolution of Useful Things inventionsuccess
Forces of conflict A pattern which prevents us from resolving our conflicting forces leaves us almost perpetually in a state of tension. For, if we live in a world where work is separated from family life, or where courtyards turn us away, or where windows are merely holes in the wall, we experience the stress of these inner and conflicting forces constantly. We can never come to rest. We are living then, in a world so made, so patterned, that we cannot, by any stratagem, defeat the tension, solve the problem, or resolve the conflict. In this kind of world the conflicts do not go away. They stay within us, nagging, tense…The build-up of stress, however minor, stays within us. We live in a state of heightened alertness, higher stress, more adrenaline, all the time. Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building Fucking up the world