Lessons from Albert Einstein

1) "Imagination is more important than knowledge." So true, it's one thing to know the technical aspects of how to do something, but when you work in a creative field, imagination trumps knowledge every single time. After all, if you need more know-how in order to execute an idea, you can always learn on the fly or out-source the technical work.

2) "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." When you're creating something out of the blue, it's going to take lots-o-tweaking before you get it just right, and you have to get comfortable with not knowing the end result. Sometimes ideas take off and become extremely profitable. Other times they just flop. It's just hard to tell what's going to work and what doesn't, so you need to always expect that something will work, but not be too upset when it doesn't.

3) "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds." I think that when you look at opposition (folks who make fun of you or your sites, or people who don't "get" you) in the right light, it can be a major motivator. You want to show them your vision, show them that you know what you're doing. The trick is to turn negativity into positive momentum. Opposition makes victory taste sweeter. :-)

4) "The only real valuable thing is intuition." You need to develop a "gut feel" that will help you detect if a person, idea or situation is healthy for you. Those who have the best intuition have the greatest success.

5) "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Einstein's creativity was heavily influenced by a thinking techinque he called "thought experiments", which was actually just plain old fashioned daydreaming  :-). This just goes to show that imagination, play, and a willingness to try new things is the key to being a visionary. (lifehack.org and esoupblog.com)