There's a book titled “The Incredible Secret Money Machine” by the late Don Lancaster. It's primarily a book on running a sole-proprietorship, that being the titular “money machine”, with maximal return on minimal effort. (One of his prescriptions is “have 0.834 employees”—don't hire anybody, on the grounds of how much paperwork and interpersonal complications that introduces, and make sure you leave enough free time for your own R&R.)

It was originally published in 1977, and a second edition in 1992, and both versions contain much that has aged not very well, if it was ever good advice at all. But there are certain parts that have aged extremely well, and I'd like to share those here today. The book is available for free as a PDF from Lancaster's website (for however long that lasts, since he passed away last year), and you may indeed find it worth reading.

The two most timeless parts of it are the chapters on writing (“words-on-paper”) and graphic design (“images”). Those chapters were deeply formative to my creative style; I still use 99% of everything I learned in them, and I still reread them from time to time. They're as solid today as they were 47 years ago.

But the bit I'm going to quote today is from the introduction to the second edition. He concludes that introduction with this: