Nothing worse than a good idea.

A disappointing building will have seemed just great in the architect’s pitch and pre-visualization: but what was clever and striking in concept often looks limited and literal-minded in execution.

So beware the good idea that resists challenge and change. Likewise, beware artworks packaged perfectly for the headline or catalogue — they may travel well as idea, yet deliver no real experience whatsoever.

For that matter, watch your own propaganda: while it may get you funding and attention, you may then be held to its promises. Good artworks can’t be regulated like that. They have minds of their own and will work only by going their own way.

Distinguish between collaborators, contributors, and consultants.

Collaborator: the full creative partner who shares completely in the creative act — but accept all the attendant triumphs and tussles, for as you share your parenting roles, you’ll sometimes have conflicting ideas about upbringing. Contributor: asked to do a specific job, they understand your intentions better than you do in their specific area, and they deliver much more than you specified. Consultant: the expert who identifies and solves domain-specific problems, never straying from the exact bounds you set.

80% is good enough .

Strictly in terms of technical underpinnings!

I believe it was Ernest Rutherford that said that in physics one tries to separate hard problems into two parts: a part that is easy, and a part that is small. There are now large areas of engineering where the academics are hard at work on the small and a large and easy expanse of technique is either rapidly implementable or available in a form that is readily usable if you make sure to avoid the hard small part that everybody else seems to be talking about.

90% complete is only halfway there.

When you think your project is nearing the end, it isn’t. The finicky details of finishing take time. So adjust your plans accordingly, and avoid premature self-congratulation.

Never use text-as-texture.

Don’t succumb to temptation — yes, it’s easy to use an expansive wash of words to convey something-or-other (intricate inter-connection, information overload, etc), but reducing words to texturemaps and video crawls is a trap for the lazy and a sure sign of intellectual dishonesty.

Don’t go searching for saints; better to find (and to become) a mensch.

There’s no such thing as a perfect human being — everyone is compromised in one context or another. But there are decent human beings out there, and the world would be a better place if they were the more modest but more attainable ideal we all aspired to.