> “Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.” – [Clayton Christensen](http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr).
Another excerpt:
> “It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.”
[This interview with Eagleman by the Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/04/david-eagleman-40-afterlives) contains a lot of great bits, many which resonate with my recent thinking. Eagleman is the author of [Sum](http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/alternative-afterlives.html), which I greatly enjoyed.
> I’m using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human – it turns out that it’s a great lens with which to understand what matters to us.
This is similar to my philosophy on concept design–tell yourself (and others) that this is the “future” experience, when really that’s just a technique to help you think about what you wish things were like today.
> Every time you go into a book store, you find a lot of books written with certainty…I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.
As I get older I feel like I “know” less and less. I always expected it to be the opposite, but this feels right.
> I think the first decade of this century is going to be remembered as a time of extremism. But, as Voltaire said, “uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd position”.
I’ve often said that my job title is designer, but that what I’m paid to do is tolerate uncertainty. It’s uncomfortable and hard to do, but most important projects require a significant period of uncertainty and very few people are willing to endure that.
“I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation.” – Milton Glaser’s rule #8
“Mission is revealing to others their fundamental beauty, value and importance in the universe, their capacity to love, to grow and to do beautiful things and to meet God.” – Jean Vanier.
One of the things that I am becoming aware of more and more is that from the very beginning of my life there have been two voices. one voice saying, “Henri, be sure you make it on your awn, be sure you can do it yourself, be sure you become an independent person. Be sure that I can be proud of you.” And, another voice saying “Henri, whatever you are going to do, even if you don't do anything very interesting in the eyes of the world, be sure you stay close to the heart of Jesus, be sure you stay close to the lave of God.” You can sort of guess which voice was whose. – Henri Nouwen.