Stop trying so hard to get it all right.

I’m obsessed with biographies. I read them all the time. Something I’ve found that all great men and women have in common is they’re deeply flawed.

They’re idealistic.
They’re impulsive.
They’re impatient.
They’re idiosyncratic.

Steve Jobs wouldn’t bathe. He’d wear the same thing most days. He’d sit with his nose pressed up against a wall for hours at a time. He’d go on diets where he would eat only apples.

Virginia Woolf was hyper sensitive to noise. She’s get horribly paranoid about others reading her drafts. She’d hear voices of birds singing in Greek. She’d only eat bread and milk during long writing binges.

While the pursuit of mastery in a craft isn’t an excuse to be cruel, it requires and ongoing practice in letting perfection go in other pursuits.

It’s not possible for somebody to be great at a thing while simultaneously being great at many other things. And so choosing greatness is at the same time choosing incompetence.

This is liberating. Once you decide the things you’re willing to fail at, life gets so much easier.

And if you ever become famous enough to have a biography written about you—which will likely only happen after you’re dead—it will be the failures, flaws and imperfections that readers most hang onto.

I adore Virginia Wolf’s gorgeous prose but what I’m most fascinated by are those birds who spoke to her in the tongue of Aphrodite.

What did they say to you, Virginia?