The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

by Scott Belsky

But the problem with this relentless drive for productivity is surrendering your flexibility. Without a certain amount of capacity left idle, you are less able to accommodate circumstantial opportunities as they arise. Without fluidity, you’re not able to adapt. You need to create and preserve some margin of downtime in your days to reach your full potential.

Ego is rust. So much value and potential are destroyed in its slow decay. Achievement rarely ages well, unless you keep sanding it down.

The most humbling part of creation is that you’re never truly done. A finish, it turns out, is an abstract mile marker that makes your long journey through life more digestible.

Much like the end of a book or movie, how you end your project determines your chances for a sequel.

A great finish is on your own terms, and it starts with that fully satisfied feeling that you want to hold on to.

Your legacy will never retire, but it is set on the note you leave it with.

“Wealth is ultimately feeling like you got your full portion.”

Realizing a deeply held conviction was wrong is a new lease on life.

Learning is an elixir of life,

Whatever challenge you’re suffering from, you can use it to decide if you want to live less or live more.

If it’s something you just want to accomplish but don’t wish to remember doing, consider saying no. However, if it is an experience that you wish to remember, then spend the time enduring the friction to create memories you’ll never forget. Because the best parts of life have friction, and memories are all that we have.

never assume that what worked before will work again.

Itai Dinour, Michael Schwalbe, Mike Brown, Erin Brannan, Alex Shapses, Garrett Camp, Tim Ferriss, Yves Behar, Dave Morin, Jenn Hyman, Jocelyn Glei, Felecitas Yeske, Michael Meyer, the Benchmark team, Hunter Walk and Satya Patel at Homebrew, Fred Wilson, Joanne Wilson, Albert Wenger, the Founder Collective, JB Osborne, Emily Heyward, Becky Grossman, Ben Grossman, the Posternack family, Josh Elman, Semil Shah, Julio Vasconcellos, Andrew Barr, the Prefer team, my amazing product leadership team at Adobe, the sweetgreen guys, Mike from the music-now-cheese shop, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, James Higa, Elliot Zeisel, John Maeda, Simon Sinek, and Seth Godin. I am also especially grateful to Nina Bingham, my longtime executive assistant, whose judgment, commitment, and talent help me make the most of every day.

peoople to gef to know

keep my priorities at the front and values at the center.