ON INTENSITY

An intense center of work is a function of having intense people. Intense people cannot be borne in a workplace — they have to start out that way. Having a common overall goal indeed helps, but the former condition is necessary.

Constructive, intense people find rewards for progress within themselves, not from the outside. They find positive ways to interface with their community — often serving to lead the dialogue and energy for the benefit of all. Less constructive, intense people seek external rewards and try to disengage themselves from a sense of community with a kind of righteousness that threatens all the goodness around him/her.

In my own career, I have found myself wavering between the good and bad like any normal intense human being. I have seen in life, there is a choice in either extreme. My current experience has guided me to conclude that the former (the light side) is in the end truly the only route for any career with a deeper meaning. I ask within each of your own developing careers, that you find the more productive route to life sooner, rather than take as long as i have had to finally figure it out.

– John Maeda (director of the Aesthetics and Computation Group of the MIT Media Lab)

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