Skill is earned. It’s learned and practiced and hard-won. It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.
~ Seth Godin
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He that cometh to seek after knowledge with a mind to scorn and censure shall be sure to find matter for his humor, but none for his instruction.
~ Francis Bacon
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A sneer is the weapon of the weak. Like other devil’s weapons, it is always cunningly ready to our hand, and there is more poison in the handle than in the point.
~ James Russell Lowell
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One day I’ll be a filmmaker! One day I’ll be a famous artist! One day I’ll be a CEO! One day I’ll be a Creative Director! One day I’ll be a Venture Capitalist! And so forth.
~ Hugh MacLeod
Then you get to a certain age and you realize that the time for “One Day” is over. You’re either doing it, or you’re not. And if you’re not, a feeling of bitter disappointment starts hitting you deep into the marrow. Which explains why we all know so many people in their 30s and 40s having mid-life crisis’.
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If someone were to ask me to identify the single primary quality that an artist or entrepreneur should cultivate in himself, I would say depth of commitment. Because depth of commitment either embodies all the other virtues or establishes the fertile field in which they can take root and grow. Depth of commitment presupposes courage, passion, recklessness, capacity for self-discipline, and the ability to have fun. It implies perseverance.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Play more. I feel like people are so serious, and it doesn’t take much for people to drop back into the wisdom of a childlike playfulness. If I had to prescribe two things to improve health and happiness in the world, it’d be movement and play. Because you can’t really play without moving, so they’re intertwined.
~ Jason Nemer
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Everything has two handles, by one of which it may be carried, and by the other not. If your brother wrongs you, do not take it by this handle, that he is wronging you (for this is the handle that it cannot be carried by), but by the other, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you, and then you will be taking it by the handle by which it ought to be carried.
~ Epictetus
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Aristotle talked about three kinds of work, whereas in our modern world we tend to emphasize only two. The first is theoretical work, for which the end goal is truth. The second is practical work, where the objective is action. But there is a third: It is poietical work. The philosopher Martin Heidegger described poiesis as a “bringing-forth.” This third type of work is the Essentialist way of approaching execution: An Essentialist produces more—brings forth more—by removing more instead of doing more.
~ Greg McKeown
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Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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To attain knowledge add things every day. To attain wisdom subtract things every day.
~ Lao Tzu
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Never be mean to somebody who can hurt you by doing nothing. The reality is, that’s probably true of everybody you interact with; you’re interacting with them because you want them to do something.
~ Chris Voss
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Worrying is impossible without attachment. No one worries about the weather on Saturn, because no one is counting on the weather to be a certain way. The time we spend worrying is actually time we’re spending trying to control something that is out of our control. Time invested in something that is within our control is called work. That’s where our most productive focus lies.
~ Seth Godin
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If the problem can be solved, why worry? And if the problem can’t be solved, then worrying will do you no good.
~ Shantideva
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You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
~ Josh Billings
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I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up you pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing.
~ Shirley Jackson
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I don’t complain about the lack of time… what little I have will go far enough. Today—this day—will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay seige to the gods and shake up the world.
~ Seneca, Medea, 423-5
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Sounds like we’re losing our grit. We’ve been brought up to think we’re so smart and clever and that we don’t have to work hard for anything that we just give up when we come against a tough problem. The main difference between innovators and the rest of us is that innovators ask more and better questions.
~ Shane Parrish
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To be a digital minimalist, in other words, means you accept the idea that new communication technologies have the potential to massively improve your life, but also recognize that realizing this potential is hard work.
~ Cal Newport
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The trick is: You bite off more than you can chew… and then you still chew it. Your mind always believes it can do less than it actually can. It will tell you it’s too much, to stop, to take a break, to cancel this or that. But your mind will lie to you to keep you small.
~ Will Smith
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