you can do.

How do you practice these intentions? Well that's what affirmations are. So if you just visualize what you intend, you act on your intentions. Your body, your brain, your focus, the amount of time you think about it, the clarity especially. Vague intentions don't have any power. A clear intention does. So when Bill Gates said we're going to put a computer on every desk or something like that, that's as clear as you can get. Microsoft did okay, right? And I think also that Steve Jobs was a master of clarity. And I don't know how he did it. Maybe it's by being a bigger bastard or something. But I feel in my life if I say all right I'll give you a concrete example.

When I was designing my house and it was time to do the landscape I had a landscape architect and I said I have one primary number one rule for designing what plants and bushes are on my lawn. They can't be the kind that lose their leaves in the winter because this is California. Why in the world would I have any kind of a plant life that loses its leaves just because it's winter? There are plenty of them that don't. So I said that's the rule. It's the only rule. I'm not going to over-design. I have one rule. They can't lose their leaves.

So a few weeks later I get the design. It's very complete and there's a drawing of every bush with a name of every bush and I don't understand the Latin names of the bushes so I can't really even tell what they are by looking at the picture. So I asked okay since I only had one requirement do any of these plants lose their leaves? He goes well you know. I go all right let me point to one. Does this one lose its leaves? Well yes it does. And I said what? What part of there's only one thing I care about did you not understand? And then he explained it to me this way. The plant that I put in there for a month or two a year will have these wonderful little flowers. You're gonna love them. And I said yeah I get that. I get that. It doesn't change the fact that I don't want 10 months of the year or six months a year to look at a bunch of branches. I'm not going to trade a few flowers for a month for empty branches for six months. Just don't do that.

I said okay what about this one? He was like well yeah they sort of lose their leaves but the flowers for that one month are awesome. And I went through this discussion with plant after plant. Most of them were evergreens but there were just a whole bunch of them you put in there. Now that's a normal experience, right? I'm talking about my very specific experience but don't you recognize that you say I only want one thing and then they give you something else? Like what is hard to understand about one thing? That's the real world.

So somehow Steve Jobs managed to avoid that and it's got to be with how big of an he was because I can't think of another way to do it. Because I wasn't a big enough that when my landscape designer presented me exactly what I didn't ask for that he didn't, well he did get fired basically. He did get fired. So I don't think he expected that. I do not think he expected to get fired. But if you only ask for one thing and you don't get it it's game over.

So one of my problems in management is that my personality fools people into thinking I'm flexible. If I were your boss wouldn't you think I'm pretty easy going? Well he's not going to give me any trouble. He'll be flexible. I can work from home, come in late, whatever I want. And the problem is that I'm flexible