From the Inspirational Thought Unit
I think a lot of what we consider genius or brilliance or magic is just someone focusing their time, energy, and thought on something for so long that they've exhausted all the bad ways to do it.
Composer Irving Berlin is widely considered one of the best songwriters in history. He wrote "White Christmas," "God Bless America," "Putin on the Ritz," "There's no business like show business" and I could go on and on. All classics and timeless.
But you might not know that over his 60 year career he published over 1500 songs. FIFTEEN HUNDRED! And those are just the one's published. How many songs did he just scrap and move on from?
According to Saul Bornstein , Berlin's manager, his working method was this:
"It was a ritual for Berlin to write a complete song, words and music, every day."
A song. Every. Single. Day.
If you're at bat that many times you're bound to hit a few home runs.
I like how Teller puts it:
"Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."