mail.google.com Quotes

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.

The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.

To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what's right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve problems for you.

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows. You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.

“One of the main challenges of strategic work is setting aside time to do it. There is a never-ending flow of technical work that comes and finds you. Strategic work won't come to you this way; you have to lead it. To do that, you will have to defer, delegate, or deny technical work that comes your way. In short, if you're waiting for room to do strategic work, you are not leading.”

We should have been shown how every grade supports us to see ourselves more clearly, take responsibility for our life circumstance, and make better choices. In other words, a mature adult seeks out metrics rather than avoids them because they want to know the truth.

What You Should Have Learned

“One of the many things we should have been taught in school is the difference between fixing the symptoms of a problem versus the root of the problem. We are taught content and rewarded for regurgitating it. It's a system that produces Technicians. What are the problems you still endure because no one taught you to think outside your own box? What do you want to do about it?”

“The ability to track when facts contradict beliefs is a governing dynamic of leadership growth. In these moments you have the choice to defend your view, or change it. If you choose not to notice these moments, you choose not to have the choice. Decisions are always made based on assumptions; therefore, a responsible leader is always looking for where their beliefs might be wrong and watches for their own defensiveness as a clue.

Procrastination: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

“Fear is part of being a leader, but procrastination is a partial repression of fear that allows for neither action nor self-discovery. It is a recipe for stagnation. The longer you wait, the scarier it gets and so the self-fulfilling prophecy unfolds as the price for avoidance grows hour by hour. What are you avoiding? Do it now.”

A lever can make work easier, but someone still has to apply their strength to make something happen.”

People and Systems

“The idea that systems do the work and people run the systems is a powerful one that has transformed many businesses. However, who the people are inevitably comes through in the systems, whether at the level of design or operation. Systems will never obviate the need for caring, passionate, determined, hard-working people. Systems just allow for such people to express themselves more effectively and apply their abilities to more important things.

Procrastination

“Procrastin ation means there is fear small enough to ignore, but too big to not have an impact. What you actually put off when you procrastinate is facing your fear, not only the thing you're avoiding.”

The Myth of Objectivity

“There is no such thing as objectivity. There is only knowing yourself and your own filters well enough to minimize the distortion in your perception. In other words, the clear-headed objectivity you seek comes from owning how subjective you actually are. You can't take your glasses off, but you can learn how they work and account for the scratches and fog.”

The Dance of Sales

“Unfortunately, lead conversion is often doing heavier lifting than it should because of poor lead generation. A properly generated lead has already made an emotional commitment to buy and simply needs emotional reinforcement and rational support to follow through. This means that good sales is like good dancing: you're getting out of the way as much as you are leading.”

Owning Debt

“We are so accustomed to governments running at a deficit we do not ask what it means for an entire country to be trillions of dollars in debt. What to do about the debt, and how the debt should be reduced are the questions perennially asked.

Create Value, Not Jobs or Money

“The idea of 'creating jobs' is akin to seeking money for its own sake. A responsible leader isn't interested in creating jobs any more than they are interested in creating money. The deeper goal is to efficiently bring extraordinary value to the world. Job creation, like profit, is a byproduct of a business that works. In short, the question of how to create jobs is the wrong one.

When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

You only have so many breaths, so many hugs, and so many days to live, so shouldn’t you be head over heels in love with what you’re doing?