Good inventing is like a well-prepared meal where you've taken care to learn how to cook, using the right recipes.  You've hung around and learned from other people who know how to cook good meals.  You've practiced, and you've even burnt a few things and had to throw them out, but you learned what to do and what not to do.  As with good inventing, you gained the wisdom necessary to cook a great meal that you've prepared and are ready to share with people who are going to enjoy it. 

 

Bad inventing is a microwave burrito.  The bad kind you get in a convenience store.  It looks bad when you find it in the back of that freezer case.  It smells bad when it's cooking in that nasty microwave in the back of the convenience store.  It tastes bad when you eat it, but you eat it anyway.  Why?  Because like bad inventing, you've worked yourself up into a rush and you're not thinking through what you are doing.  In the end, in both cases you're sick to your stomach and full of remorse. 

 

But it doesn't have to be that way.