If I had understood high school more, I would have gotten into a lot more trouble while I was there. 🤣
With a better understanding of college, I would have maybe gotten a different degree. 🤷♂️
If I had understood time more, I would have soaked up more long nights talking with my parents.
If you had understood commodity cycles more, you would have gone long on oil at $20 per barrel.
A few weeks ago I privately wrote about this in regard to business…
The long and short of it is that companies often fail to understand what business they are in – not just McDonald’s.
The act was still rocking, but audience disruptions, whoops and shouts, sometimes killed the timing of bits, violating my premise that every moment mattered. The days of the heckler comebacks were over. The audiences were so large that if someone was calling or signaling to me, only I and their immediate seatmates could hear them. My timing was jarred, yet if I had responded to the heckler, the rest of the audience wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. Today I realize that I misunderstood what my last year of stand-up was about. I had become a party host, presiding not over timing and ideas but over a celebratory bash of my own making. If I had understood what was happening, I might have been happier, but I didn’t. I still thought I was doing comedy.
-Steve Martin, Born Standing Up (Amazon)
