One day, a client came to the great artist Henri Matisse, with the desire to buy one of the master’s works.
He tells Matisse that he wants to buy something, and Matisse pulls out a sheet of paper, and with a few deft strokes, creates one of his highly distinctive, masterful drawings. “Ah, beautiful!” says the customer. “How much?” Matisse names a price so high that the customer is shocked. “So much, for just a minute of drawing?” he protests. “A minute of drawing, a lifetime of practice,” answers Matisse.
I love this story—even though it probably is apocryphal—because it’s a good reminder that we can’t always measure value by time, labor, or visible effort.
