Tortoise enclosures

I stole this video from Merlin Mann, a recently-discovered hero.

John Cleese hits a lot of nails on their heads here. I love the idea of “tortoise enclosures.” When I’m being creative — while making websites, writing code, writing blog posts and magazine articles, whatever — my best tortoise enclosures are coffee houses and my headphones that I keep at the office that I use to ignore my boss. He hates those headphones and I love them for the same reason: I can ignore everything around me (namely, him) and get things done. He’ll probably read this blog post and scowl at me because both of us know that I’m good at what I do. I’m not being cocky, I swear.

On that note, I also like Cleese’s point about blind spots: how people who are bad at something often don’t know they are bad at it because they lack the intuition at that thing to tell good from bad. This is why we see really bad American Idol contestants and leaders who suck at leading, and talented workers who know better than to climb corporate ladders if they’re good at the job they’re already doing.