highlights
35 highlights saved, filed under business.
- 01
We’re extremely adroit at hiding our fear. Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we’re afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.
- 02
If you can embrace the idea that your success and happiness are tied up in defeating the fear that’s holding you back, you’re 90 percent of the way to where you need to go,
- 03
It’s easy to fall so in love with the idea of starting that we never actually start.
- 04
We’re trained to fit in, not to stand out, and the easiest way in the world to fit in is to never initiate. Don’t speak up. If you see something, don’t say anything.
- 05
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting. Siddhārtha Gautama
- 06
The seventh imperative is to have the guts and the heart and the passion to ship.
- 07
Life is a buzzer box. Poke it.
- 08
Dr. Souman, “Don’t trust your senses because even though you might think you are walking in a straight line, you’re not.”
- 09
Human nature is to need a map. If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow.
- 10
Ownership comes from understanding and from having the power to make things happen.
- 11
No one has influence, control, or confidence in his work until he understands how to initiate change and predict how the box will respond.
- 12
Soon is not as good as now.
- 13
Risk involves winning and losing. We put something at stake, and it might pay off (or it might not).
- 14
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance . . . and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.
- 15
Steven Pressfield gives the voice of the lizard brain a name: he calls it the resistance.
- 16
Zig Ziglar taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “Hey, maybe I should check my e-mail for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain will soon be trained to use that escape hatch again and again.
- 17
There’s never a problem getting a posse together to fix the broken. The upside for you (and the challenge) is to find the energy and the will to challenge the mediocre.
- 18
When in Doubt . . . Look for the fear. That’s almost always the source of your doubt.
- 19
Initiative is a little like creativity in that both require curiosity. Not the search for the “right” answer, as much as an insatiable desire to understand how something works and how it might work better.
- 20
The difference is that the creative person is satisfied once he sees how it’s done. The initiator won’t rest until he does it.
- 21
“Pick me, pick me” acknowledges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone else to initiate. Even better, “pick me, pick me” moves the blame from you to them. If you don’t get picked, it’s their fault, not yours. If you do get picked, well, they said you were good, right? Not your fault anymore. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- 22
Smart entrepreneurs understand that a thriving organization needs more than one person creating change.
- 23
Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.
- 24
Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them.
- 25
We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee.
- 26
Is your work so serious and flawless and urgent that each thing you do, every day, must work?
- 27
Change is powerful, but change always comes with failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you should seek out.
- 28
Starting means you’re going to finish. If it doesn’t ship, you’ve failed. You haven’t poked the box if the box doesn’t realize it’s been poked.
- 29
To merely start without finishing is just boasting, or stalling, or a waste of time. I have no patience at all for people who believe they are doing their best work but are hiding it from the market. If you don’t ship, you actually haven’t started anything at all.
- 30
The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work.
- 31
One reason organizations get stuck is that they stick with their “A” players so long that they lose their bench. In a world that’s changing, a team with no bench strength and a rigid outlook on the game will always end up losing.
- 32
Worse, the nature of the work is inherently unremarkable. If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low.
- 33
I’m merely encouraging you to start. Often. Forever. Be the one who starts things.
- 34
It’s impossible to have a “success-only” policy. That policy itself will guarantee that there will be no successes.
- 35
The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.