I was at the Sydney Cricket Ground yesterday and sat in the crowd with my friend Maurice.  We watched Ricky Ponting and his Australia team score 267 runs against the Pakistan team on an overcast but warm day – perfect temperature for sitting outside.

Maurice shared with me three pearls of wisdom that had been passed down to him by an early boss:

1. Don’t polish turds
2. Don’t boil oceans
3. Hope is not a strategy

 You can put glitter on a turd, but inside it will still be a turd.  Life is too short to have any great success heating an entire ocean. If you don’t have any idea how you’re going to get there, it’s unlikely that you get there.

We also talked about the best books we had read in 2009.  I am running low on fiction ideas.  Any thoughts?

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