While surfing the exquisite Dustan Orchard's 1976design blog this morning, I came across this post: Link presentation and Fitts' Law. Fitts' Law is a UI guideline that says:

"The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target."

– Paul Fitts

Tog goes into this more here.

Of course, me being me, I immediately thought of this not as UI guideline but as a piece of life wisdom. The targets I've been setting for myself lately are huge.

In much the same vein, I picked up these pieces of wisdom from the lovely Caterina Fake this morning:

"Nothing frightens true entrepreneurs because nothing can be allowed to interfere with their vision. They have the same passion as artists and writers. Just as an artist creates a painting from scratch, so entrepreneurs can realize their own dreams in precisely the same way – by turning an idea into reality, earning a livelihood from it and, hopefully, making a profit."

– Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop

"The challenge for business leaders in the twenty-first century is to assume the mantle of spiritual elder for their cultures, so that life doesn't become trivial and grey for all the people who spend most of their life at work."

– Jim Channon

The first one really struck home for me, because that so epitomizes the way I work and what I'm always trying to do – dream stuff up and then make it real. The second one got me because that's where my previous full-time employer failed – while they were constantly doing the old "Look! Shiny!" routine, dandling parties and little favors about, they didn't really keep those of us in the trenches inspired to bend over backwards for the millionaires in the upper echelons. (Except for the founder – him, I definitely admire. Some of the others, though, were hellspawn.)

And now here I am, trying to do amazing things on a shoestring budget, and getting tired of shoestrings. Oh, well – story of my life, I guess.