651 Posts Found

To be successful, you have to put your time in and be centered and humbled enough to observe other people. Stravinsky used to say observation is the key responsibility for creative people. He thought it was important to watch the forces of nature… I think all the answers to our questions are out there in the universe if we just can slow down enough to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Achievement, Attention, Personal Development, Success / Failure

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Content: Quotation | Subjects: Competence, Leadership, Management, Skills

The future is already here — it is just not very evenly distributed.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Future

A company is more likely to die of indigestion from too much opportunity than starvation from too little.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Packard | Subject: Opportunity

It’s is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of acting.

Content: Quotation | Subjects: Action, Culture, Thought

In our view, leaders would do well to take a more systematic approach to developing their decision-making capabilities. The place to start is… with intellectual integrity. In common usage, the word integrity means honorable or virtuous behavior. For our purposes, though, we draw a distinction between exhibiting honorable behavior (moral integrity) and exhibiting discipline, clarity, and consistency so that all of one’s decisions fit together … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: A.G. Lafley, Roger L. Martin | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Integrity, Thought

How can you make sense of the future when you only have data about the past? That’s the role of theory, to look into the future.

Content: Quotation | Author: Clayton M. Christensen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Future, Thought

Freeing up the mind is a good way to get to inspiration. We fill our lives with so little space. Inspiration looks for crevices to parachute into. The fewer crevices you create in your life, the less likely you are to have inspiration come through you. You need to allow yourself to be a vessel so that something can come through you.

Content: Quotation | Author: Chip Conley | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation, Thought

Paul Graham, essayist, programmer, investor, and co-founder of YCombinator, the Silicon Valley tech accelerator program, describes a contrast between “maker schedules” versus “manager schedules.” Manager schedules break the day into hourlong chunks conducive for meetings and communication, but not for work that requires deep thinking, creative problem-solving, writing, or making. The work of [entrepreneurship] necessitates uninterrupted blocks of time.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Heidi Neck, Paul Graham | Source: Babson Insight | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management, Time Management

Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Time Management

The same body of psychological research that underpins behavioral economics also suggests that we are very poor natural statisticians. We are naturally prone to find spurious information in data where none exists, latch on to causal narratives that are unsupported by sketchy statistical evidence, ignore population base rates when estimating probabilities for individual cases, be overconfident in our judgments, and generally be “fooled by randomness.” … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Steier, Harvey Lewis, Jim Guszcza, John Lucker, Vivekanand Gopalkrishnan | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Statistics, Thought

Our intuitions can lead us badly astray in a way that is as surprising as it is straightforward. Kahneman identifies two types of mental processes. “Type 1” mental processes are fairly automatic, effortless and place a premium on “associative coherence.” In contrast, “Type 2” mental processes are controlled, effortful and place a premium on logical coherence. Although we fancy ourselves primarily Type 2 creatures, many … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jim Guszcza, John Lucker | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Thought, Trends / Analysis

A lot of the power of positive thinking was not built on any evidence. It was built on beliefs, some of which turned out to be right. But it wasn’t guidance from an empirical perspective. [University of North Carolina professor] Barbara Fredrickson has shown that positivity enhances well-being when it’s in the right balance. She has a three-to-one ratio: Your positive emotions should outnumber your … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Pink | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Attitude, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior, Thought

The Industrial Age was based on a new relationship with time. Instead of paying people for the things they produced, we began to pay people for their time. The Industrial Age also brought a new kind of time-based money. In order to transact, merchants and companies needed to borrow coin, and then pay it back with interest. In a sense, it is money with a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Douglas Rushkoff | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, History, Money, Time Management

If you want to become world-class as a violinist or a chess player, areas where little luck is involved, you need roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. What’s crucial is that your results, as you improve, will be a reliable indicator of your skill. as a result, feedback in these domains can be clear and unequivocal. If you compete in a field where luck plays … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael J. Mauboussin | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Luck, Personal Development, Skills

If you look at it as an individual, we are all so flawed, and we are all so bad at reasoning when our interests or our moral values are at stake. We are not going to get better at reasoning and change just by helping individuals to reason better. When you put us together into networks, systems, companies, juries and legislative bodies, we can correct … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jonathan Haidt | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork, Thought

Michael J. Mauboussin offers this rough-and-ready test for discerning the difference between skill and luck in any given event: Ask yourself if you can lose on purpose. If you can, skill is involved; if you can’t, it’s pure luck. For a more mathematical assessment, figure out the correlation between a supposed cause and its effect. If the correlation is high, the cause is likely related … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David K. Hurst, Michael J. Mauboussin | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Luck, Skills

Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.

Content: Quotation | Subjects: Ability, Personal Development, Thought

Many people are not interested in acquiring power, not because they lack ambition, but because they are living their lives as they desire.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sheryl Sandberg | Subjects: Ambition, Power / Authority

It’s easy to convince yourself you know something until you have to explain it to someone else. Then the truth comes out.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jason Fried | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Communication, Education, Knowledge, Learning