highlights
21 highlights saved, filed under productivity.
- 01
In our experience, the number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans, is your comfort. The secret to living your life to its potential is to value the important stuff above your own comfort. Therefore, the critical first step to executing well is creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the future that you want even more than you desire your own short-term comfort, and then aligning your shorter term goals and plans, with that long-term vision.
- 02
Without a compelling vision, you will discover there is no reason to go through the pain of change.
- 03
“Behind every impossible achievement is a dreamer of impossible dreams.” —Robert K. Greenleaf
- 04
Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically.
- 05
“All my life I wanted to be somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific.” —Lily Tomlin
- 06
The brain is an amazing organ. As David Frost once pointed out “It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and doesn’t stop until you get into work.”
- 07
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” —Mary Oliver
- 08
“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” —Yogi Berra
- 09
Long-term results are created by the actions you take every day. Sir William Osler, founder of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said that the secret of his success was living his life in “day-tight compartments.” What he found was that, while we plan for the future, we act in the day. To be truly effective, your daily activity must align with your long-term vision, strategies, and tactics.
- 10
“The greatest predictor of your future are your daily actions.”
- 11
It is the consistent action that turns a dream into reality.
- 12
Consistent action on the critical tasks needed to reach your goal is the key to getting what you want in life.
- 13
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 14
To use your weekly plan effectively, you will need to spend the first 15 or 20 minutes at the beginning of each week to review your progress from the past week and plan the upcoming one. In addition, the first five minutes of each day should be spent reviewing your weekly plan to plan that day’s activities.
- 15
“If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” —Thomas Edison
- 16
Knowledge alone benefits no one unless the person acquiring it does something with it.
- 17
Execution is the single greatest market differentiator. Great companies and successful individuals execute better than their competition. The barrier standing between you and the life you are capable of living is a lack of consistent execution.
- 18
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” —John Wooden
- 19
“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” —Henry Ford
- 20
The fact is every week counts! Every day counts! Every moment counts! We need to be conscious of the reality that execution happens daily and weekly, not monthly or quarterly.
- 21
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” —Aristotle