At work, Darin was talking about watching a piece on Nova about Antarctic explorers and he related a quote he really likes: "Adventure is a sign of incompetence." This was used in a work context, about how really our lives should be boring and when they are thrilling things are all screwed up. That led to a hunt for who made the quote, which led me back to the page for the Nova episode. I wished I had seen it - I'll have to check for repeats. Here is a quote from the page in just this vein - substitute the context of mountain climbing and exploring for delivering one's products in business and I'm all over this philosphy:

There is a quote I think about all the time when I'm climbing or on expeditions. It's by the great polar explorer Vilhjalmur Stefanson: "Adventure is a sign of incompetence." Stefanson was a guy who bragged that he never had adventures. He said that if you have an adventure, you're doing something wrong, that if you really plan things out in the vein of Amundsen, you don't have adventures. (Now, having said this, Stefanson relates sort of proudly how he almost got ambushed by a polar bear. Stefanson had plenty of adventures!) get freaky, here's my timesheet, leave the money on the dresser. I also liked having my time be too expensive to waste. Those days are long gone, and now wasting my time is like an indoor sport. I know plenty of people are laid off, looking for work and otherwise in the soup so I feel a little guilty for having a job yet disliking it so. But I guess, as Bobby Brown sang, "it's my perogative."