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
Unborable The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air. The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. I met, in the years 1984 and '85, two such men. It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King successboredombureaucracy
Control and Correlation An Article slimemoldtimemold.com In any control system that is functioning properly, the methods used to control a signal won’t be correlated with the signal they’re controlling. Worse, there will be several variables that DO show relationships, and may give the wrong impression. You’re looking at variables A, B, C, and D. You see that when A goes up, so does B. When A goes down, C goes up. D never changes and isn’t related to anything else — must not be important, certainly not related to the rest of the system. But of course, A is the angle of the road, B is the gas pedal, C is the brake pedal, and D is the speed of the car. statisticsfeedbackcontrol