Persistence: (noun) firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.
Determination: (noun) firmness of purpose; resoluteness.
Consistency: (noun) conformity in the application of something, typically that which is necessary for the sake of logic, accuracy, or fairness.
I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.
Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.
Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.
Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”
Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.
Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.
Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)
That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.
“You’re looking for three things, generally, in a person,” says Buffett. “Intelligence, energy, and integrity. And if they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two. I tell them, ‘Everyone here has the intelligence and energy—you wouldn’t be here otherwise. But the integrity is up to you. You weren’t born with it, you can’t learn it in school.”
When you start with why, those who believe what you believe are drawn to you for very personal reasons. It is those who share your values and beliefs , not the quality of your products, that will cause the system to tip. Your role in the process is to be crystal clear about what cause, purpose or belief you exist to champion. And to show how your product and services help advance that cause. Absent of why, new ideas and technologies quickly find themselves playing the product price and feature game, a sure sign of an absence of why and slide into commodity status. It is not the technology that failed, it is how the companies tried to sell it. – SIMON SINEK, START WITH WHY
In battle if you're faced with two hills and you're unsure which one to attack the right course of action is to hurry up and choose. If you find out it's the wrong hill turn around and attack the other one – ED CATMULL, CREATIVITY INC.
It is far easier to avoid stupidity than it is to create genius.
Say you want to create more innovation at your organization. Thinking forward, you’d think about all of the things you could do to foster innovation. If you look at the problem backwards, you’d think about all the things you could do to create less innovation. Ideally, you’d avoid those things. Sounds simple right? I bet your organization does some of those ‘stupid’ things today. - SHANE PARRISH
You're much better dealing with the devil because the devil knows how to play. (in reference to major v indie) - STEVE RENNIE
You don't grant or give partnerships. Partnerships are earned. You earn by doing. - STEVE RENNIE
"Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters"
Eliminate ruthlessly. Force yourself to focus. Complete a task or kill it. - JAMES CLEAR
It's nice to get paid but it's essential to believe. - SETH GODIN
It's uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.
When you identify the discomfort you have found the place where a leader is needed.
Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness... Later.
The art of leadership is understanding what you can't compromise on.
If you need the new thing to be better than the status quo from the beginning, you'll never begin
Maintaining a system in the face of change will grind you down.
When the world changes the rules change.
The longer you wait to launch an innovation the less your effort is worth.
Tribes grow when people recruit other people. - SETH GODIN
Part of leadership is to stick with the dream long enough so the critics realize you're going to get there eventually and follow.
People don't believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. Leaders give people stories that people can tell themselves
He united the enterprise and valor of youth with the prudence and wisdom of old age. - JFC FULLER
Of a master who never forgives, the orders are seldom disobeyed. - JFC FULLER
Constantine addressing his people as defeat and fall of Constantinople is inevitable: "let us work together my companions and my brethren, to gain for ourselves liberty, glory, and eternal memory! Crowns await you in heaven and on earth your names will be remembered honorably until the end of time. Let us die for faith and fatherland!" - JFC FULLER
"God forbid that I should live an emperor without an empire! As my city falls I will fall with it" a moment later he was cut down. - JFC FULLER
Mohamet words on taking over the church's and looking at the scene of desolation: "the spiders curtain hangs before the portal of Caesars palace; and the owl stands sentinel on the watch tower of Afrasiab - JFC FULLER
Don John: "Gentlemen the the time for counsel is past, and the time for fighting has come." on seeing the Turkish fleet and about to battle. If they lost, Western Europe would be fucked.
“What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.” – Edmond Dantes, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS
One can reign over the hearts only by keeping one's composure.
You don't have to ask permission to take responsibility. - ED CATMULL
There is nothing quite like ignorance combined with a driving need to succeed to force rapid learning. - ED CATMULL (on becoming Pixar president and not knowing what what the fuck to do)
Sending out a sharp impulse - like a dolphin used echolocation to determine the location of a school of fish - can teach you crucial things about your environment. It was how Steve jobs sized up the world. - ED CATMULL
Basic truth: People who take on complicated creative projects become lost at some point in the process. - ED CATMULL
Frank talk, spirited debate, laughter and love were the foundations of the brain trust. - ED CATMULL
The key to not feeling threatened in the brain trust is to look at viewpoints being offered as additive not competitive. It is valuable because it broadens your perspective allowing you to peer through others' eyes. - ED CATMULL
Telling the truth is difficult but inside of a creative company it is the only way to ensure excellence. - ED CATMULL
The cost of failure is an investment in the future. - ED CATMULL
While planning is very important there is only so much you can control in a creative environment.
Leaders must demonstrate their trustworthiness over time through their actions and the best way to do that is by responding well to failure.
“How can you know that you’re building something people want unless you try to sell it to them first?”
Vision without execution is just a hallucination. - JEFFERY E GARTEN
The most creative people are willing to work in the shadow of uncertainty.
It wouldn't be the first time we would find someone who was able to invent widely creative elements but was unable to solve the problems of story - the central and most important creative challenge.
Driving the train doesn't set its course. The real job is laying the tracks
"Define a strategy, test it up front, and pivot if you're not getting the traction you expected" - MARK SUSTER partner in upfront ventures
It's difficult sometimes to tell the difference between what is impossible and what is possible (but requires a big reach)
Would it have been easier to wire bonuses into employees direct deposit accounts? Yes, but like I always say when talking about making a movie, easy isn't the goal. Quality is the goal.
Only love is going to fill that hole. You can't win enough, you can't have enough money, you can't succeed enough. There is not enough. The only thing that will ever satiate that existential thirst is love. And I just remember that day I made the shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep, and beautiful relationships I could have." - WILL SMITH
The future is not a destination - it is a direction. - ED CATMULL
Progress often hides behind boring solutions and underused insights. You don’t need more information. You don’t need a better strategy. You just need to do more of what already works - JAMES CLEAR
Discipline and keen insight served Mr. Lincoln once again most effectively.
One is weary of eating on porcelain and eats on silver; wearying of that, one eats on gold.”
The only thing needed to begin a new life is a new perspective. Let your limitations fill you with strength rather than deplete your power. The more we limit ourselves, the more resourceful we become.
Mr. Buffett, who is 84 years old, has never wavered in the principles he learned from his mentor, Benjamin Graham: Stocks are ownership stakes in businesses, not pieces of paper or blips on an electronic ticker; their market prices often are driven by the mood swings of investors rather than by the value of the underlying businesses; and investing is worthwhile only when value exceeds price by an amount great enough to create a “margin of safety.” Nor has he ever changed his views on three of the most powerful weapons in the investing arsenal: cash, emotion and information. Unlike most money managers, who hate cash for impairing performance during bull markets, Mr. Buffett loves it. As he wrote in his 2010 letter, cash equips Berkshire “both financially and emotionally to play offense while others scramble for survival.”
On warren Buffett: he's extraordinarily good and knowing what he's good at and what he's not, and staying away from the latter
“In the end everything already exists; we’re not inventors of anything. But this is the definition of creativity. It’s seeing what other people don’t see - Ferran Adrià (chef)
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs most is more people who have come alive. - Howard Thurman.
Imagination allows us to conceive of delightful future possibilities, pick the most amazing one, and pull the present forward to meet it. - philosopher JASON SILVA
If you're interested in mastery you have to learn this lesson. To really achieve anything you have to be able to tolerate and enjoy risk. It has to become a challenge to look forward to. In all fields to make exceptional discoveries you need risk, you're just never going to have a breakthrough without it.
Final results are a reflection of prior commitment.
He looked at the man as he looked occasionally at the pavement from a window on the thirtieth floor, wondering about his own body were it were it to be hurled down and what would happen when it struck against the pavement.
"But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want, I do." At the end of July Roark signed a contract to build the Aquitaina. - FOUNDATINHEAD, AYN RAND
Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness... I cannot be forgiven. I was not born a second-hander. - Gail Wynand
Watch your time like you watch your money. - ELI BROAD
For us, there is no finish line. No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit. Life is the hunt. When our hears burst... Then we'll go out, and no sooner
The earth is to electrons as an ocean is to drops of water. The earth is a virtually limitless source of electrons and also a giant sink for electrons.
I wept because I've no shoes and then I saw the man who had no feet. - Patti Smith's mom
Then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
On Gatsby dreaming of riches. "For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the Rock of the world was founded securely in a fairy's wing."
To be American is to be free to make something of yourself. The most important American-manufactured products are Americans themselves.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
When the tide goes out, you can tell who's been skinny dipping - WARREN BUFFETT
Winning at money is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent knowledge. -DAVE RAMSEY
For your own good, for the good of your family and your future, grow a backbone. When something is wrong, stand up and say it is wrong. And don't back down - DAVE RAMSEY
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds. - Albert Einstein
Art doesn't reveal itself immediately. The song and the rest of the album weren't something for me to reject but to figure out.
There are two main dangers in life. Risking too much and risking too little - JIMMY CHIN, modern explorer, skier and director
Figure out what your talent is, what your desire is, and figure out a goal that's right in the center of that. - Hunter S Thompson by way of Bill Murray
We have $30 million to spend. Someone's gotta do it. - CODY ROMNESS
Why have the Stones lasted so long while all others faded? "It's Mick. His clearheadedness, his lack of sentimentality. Kind people don't make it"
Good ideas are always crazy until they're not. - Larry Page
Stay to myself, stay to my vision and infiltrate that world... Always make what you would wear and make people believe it." - Tyler The Creator
Evil triumphs only when good men do nothing.
Entrance to one of their shows was by wearing a limited edition red or yellow coloured T-shirt which was sent to you in the post, instead of a physical ticket. - Lemon Jelly
Ideas started having sex. The coupling of ideas in the heads of the common people yielded an explosion of betterments. (Steam engine + railroad tracks)
limitations can expand rather than shrink the creative flow. - Amanda Palmer
After discovery comes development. - Angela Duckworth
"Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right" - Henry ford
Look for signs. then read the writing on the wall – don't close your eyes. - Steve Rennie
Continue to be selective. It will pay off.