“Now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?” 

            Harry shook his head. 

            “Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see him exactly as he is. Does that help?”

            Harry thought. Then he said slowly, “It shows us what we want. Whatever we want.”

            “Yes and no,” said Dumbledore quietly. “It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted way before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.”

“The mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again… . It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.”

—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone 

            I learned an invaluable lesson from a wealthy and successful businessman here in Portland who owns a chain of coffee shops. Few of us were sitting in one of his shops one morning, and another friend asked if we had seen the World Series of Poker on television the night before. None of us had, but that mention led to a conversation about gambling.

            My friend who owns the coffee shops told us, in a tone of kindness and truth, that nobody he knows who is successful gambles; rather, they work hard, they accept the facts of reality, they enjoy life as it is. “But the facts of reality stinks,” I told him. “Reality is like a fine wine,” he said to me. “It will not appeal to children.”

— Don Miller, Searching for God Knows What

Hobbes: Do you have an idea for your project yet?

Calvin: No, I’m waiting for inspiration. You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.

Hobbes: What mood is that?

Calvin: Last-minute panic.

            It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the conrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows?

— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

            Dreamers are fun to be around, but they struggle to stay focused. In their idea frenzy, they are liable to forget to return phone calls, complete current projects, even pay the rent. While Dreamers are more likely than anyone to conceive of brilliant solutions, they are less likely to follow through.

            Doers don’t imagine as much because they are obsessively focused on the logistics of execution. Doers get frustrated when, while brainstorming, there is no consideration for implementation. While Dreamers will quickly fall in love with an idea, Doers will start with doubt and chip away at the idea until they love it (or, often, discount it).

            Then there are the Incrementalists — those with the ability to play the role of both Dreamer and Doer. When imagination runs amok in the Dreamer phase, the Incrementalist begins to feel impatient. The developing sense of impatience brings on the Doer phase, and the idea at hand is pushed into execution. And when the time comes to pull back and dream again, the return is a welcome relief from being buried in the managerial mind-set. 

            You might think that becoming an Incrementalist is the Holy Grail for making ideas happen. Unfortunately, Incrementalists have the tendency to conceive and execute too many ideas simply because they can. This rare capability can lead to an overwhelming set of responsibilities to maintain muliple projects at the expense of ever making one particular project an extraordinary success.

            In my research, I came across many Incrementalists who were known within their communities for their many projects but never on a global scale. The Incrementalist’s brands, products, and ideas are seldom sufficiently pushed to their full potential.

            While a Doer and a Dreamer are best paired with each other, Incrementalists can thrive when they are paired with either one. Incrementalists  are the “O” blood type of the world of collaboration — the universal donor. 

— Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen 

            You ask me whether your verses are any good. You ask me.

            You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing.

            You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

            Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer.

            And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The Little Prince went away to look again at the roses.

           “You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

            And the roses were very much embarrassed.

            “You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing.

         “Because she is my rose.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

         “Ladies and Gentlemen, behold: The Enemy:”

         He raised the blinds, and there was the street below. Townies going up and down upon the land. Greased, efficient gears in the Village engine. Harm-less.

         “Relentless. Unstoppable. You cannot hope to defeat them. Nor, as a matter of fact, would you want to. Their defeat also means yours. When a host dies, he takes his virus with him. Viruses are fools—they work toward their own extinction. Not you. You will sustain the enemy as long as possible, and flourish.

         “So why are they the enemy? Because they are bent on destroying you. They did it yesterday. They’ll do it tomorrow. They’re curing themselves of you as I speak—their serum is Indifference. Your job is to infect them, to elude the antidote, and to thrive. To make your thoughts into their obsessions, your whims into their rapacious desires. And I will show you how to do it. If this isn’t what you had in mind, leave now to join them and become our food and save me considerable trouble. My job is to give you courage, cunning, power. To make you strong. To make you smarter. To make you ruthless. Because when you leave here, you are not just going to work.

         “You are going to war.”

— Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys