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There are two reasons this metaphor is so compelling – apart from the sheer fact that it's Finland-related, I mean. One is how vividly it illustrates a critical insight about persistence: that in the first weeks or years of any worthwhile project, feedback – whether from your own emotions, or from other people – isn't a reliable indication of how you're doing. (This shouldn't be confused with the dodgy dictum that triggering hostile reactions means you must be doing the right thing; it just doesn't prove you're doing the wrong one.) The second point concerns the perils of a world that fetishises originality. A hundred self-help books urge you to have the guts to be "different": the kid who drops out of university to launch a crazy-sounding startup becomes a cultural hero… yet the Helsinki theory suggests that if you pursue originality too vigorously, you'll never reach it. Sometimes it takes more guts to keep trudging down a pre-trodden path, to the originality beyond. "Stay on the fucking bus": there are worse fridge-magnet slogans to live by.

Advice from the successful radio host on ‘making independent media. Making it, and making it your job.’

“Two quick points. Not every idea is going to work. Know that going in. Ideas tend to follow the path of least resistance and more often than not that path is the one where you find yourself talking an idea to death, by getting hung up on the ‘what ifs.’ So you need to actively push ideas out and embrace failure. Fail spectacularly whenever possible. “Secondly, every single person I have ever met or corresponded with about leaving the work-for-hire world and trying to create something of their own, something that they really care about, says exactly the same thing. Win, lose or draw they always express the same thought and most of the time they say it in exactly these words. “What they say is, ‘I should have done this sooner.’”

Great, of course.