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If a partnership doesn’t work, the response should be to keep looking for one that does work. You learn from the experience, and search for a better partnership. Just look at the ultimate partnership in our society, marriage. We know the odds of having that work—they say it is 50 percent. I’d take those odds in business. But there’s something more. Take the list of partnerships profiled in this book and put it alongside a list of individuals who have had similar success on their own. On paper, everything might line up—the dollar figures, the stock amounts, the titles and the companies. But dig deeper, and you’ll find something else, something far more important, and by far the most compelling argument for working together. Happiness. Partnerships all made these people happy, and happier than they would have been had they worked for their success alone. They had someone else with whom to experience the challenging lows and the ecstatic highs; another person in the trenches, another person to pop the champagne. Not too long ago, the Atlantic Monthly published a Harvard University study in which over 250 men had been interviewed every five years since the 1940s, to determine what really makes someone happy. To summarize the results, there was just one overriding cause of happiness: sustained relationships over a long period of time. Wealth and social class didn’t mean anything, and even exercise helped only so much. What mattered was having real communication with someone, love, and friendship—all of which you get through a sustained loving marriage or significant relationship, strong continued contact with your siblings, extended communication with grown children, and satisfying business partnerships. In the study—and it is among several that have shown the same conclusions—having real relationships was what led to other factors that were common among happy people: passing wisdom down to future generations, and being adaptable and able to bounce back from disappointments. These come with partnership. I am not surprised some of the happiest people I have known for years include the people profiled in this book. John Angelo is as happy now as he was when we were eight years old. And I am happiest when I am collaborating on a project with someone else, as I did on this book with Aaron Cohen. The highs and lows, the successes and the failures, the feeling of being with someone you know is smarter than you are, all the while confident they think the same way. Working together is much better than working
Working Together
Michael D. Eisner and Aaron R. Cohen
If one looks at creativity as a resource that we continually draw upon to make something from nothing, then our fear stems from the need to make the nonexistent come into being. As we’ve discussed, people often try to overcome this fear by simply repeating what has worked in the past. That leads nowhere—or, more accurately, it leads in the opposite direction of originality. The trick is to use our skills and knowledge not to duplicate but to invent.
Creativity, Inc.
Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
HOW YOUR DAY CHANGES WHEN YOU TURN PRO When we turn pro, everything becomes simple. Our aim centers on the ordering of our days in such a way that we overcome the fears that have paralyzed us in the past. We now structure our hours not to flee from fear, but to confront it and overcome it. We plan our activities in order to accomplish an aim. And we bring our will to bear so that we stick to this resolution. This changes our days completely. It changes what time we get up and it changes what time we go to bed. It changes what we do and what we don't do. It changes the activities we engage in and with what attitude we engage in them. It changes what we read and what we eat. It changes the shape of our bodies. When we were amateurs, our life was about drama, about denial, and about distraction. Our days were simultaneously full to the bursting point and achingly, heartbreakingly empty. But we are not amateurs any more. We are different, and everyone in our lives sees it.
Turning Pro
Steven Pressfield
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