Abandoning Crap

Once again, my friend Dave has found an item that fires me up with regard to my current obsession with ‘cleaning house’ with my personal Kempo. It’s posted to his blog, and it is an interview with Ira Glass of NPR’s This American Life. Lately I’ve looked to a variety of sources from outside the martial arts for ideas on how to improve, and have found their words very telling. I know it’s not Kempo, but it is an important lesson in development in any arena in which you wish to achieve greatness. Essentially, he shoots an enormous amount of footage, and not all of it turns out well. The idea seemed great to start, but somehow just didn’t translate. To maintain the level of quality he wants, sometimes he’s got to kill a project he’s put a lot of work into when he sees that it isn’t going to end up with something really worthwhile. He puts at least as much work finding the stories as in post production.