Yes! We are all individuals!

Well that was an inexcusably long gap since posting my last entry, so I'll try to make up for it this week. We've got a book crit tomorrow at AMV and we're competing at the Young Creative Council's Unite V event, so I'm sure there'll be plenty to talk about.

For now, I'll just get something quickly off my chest. I like advice. I particularly like advice about how to produce good work. Very often I can store that in my head and apply it to whatever it is I'm working on.

But what I can never understand is when short, pithy quotes are offered as advice on how to live your life. Our modus operandi is so fixed by the time we're adult that it takes more than a clever aphorism to change it.

So when someone quotes Steve Jobs saying, for example, "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life", they're actually rather ironically wasting their own time as well as mine. It's a great aspiration but not great advice.

You can turn your life around, but you don't just decide to do it without any significant stimulus. Look at Ricky Gervais. Before The Office he never really tried his best at anything - and I don't believe for a moment that this remarkable change was inspired by a quote he read. No, it was inspired by having something to work hard for.

I know this because the exact same process is happening for me - academic excellence followed by complacency followed by a career rut followed by opportunity. All it takes is the right opportunity, and you can grasp it, with or without the words of Steve Jobs ringing in your head.

If only I could sum up all this in a sentence...