Category: Inspirational quotes

Quotes that got me thinking

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The why of urgent vs important

You know you should be focusing on the long-term journey, on building out the facility, signing up new customers or finishing your dissertation.

But instead, there’s a queue of urgent things, all justifiable, all requiring you and you alone to handle them. And so you do, pushing off the important in favor of the urgent.

Of course, everyone has this challenge, but some people manage to get past it. Even you, the last time you made a major move forward. Think about it–those urgencies from a few years ago: who’s handling them now?

The reason we go for urgent is that it makes us feel competent. We’re good at it. We didn’t used to be, but we are now.

Important, on the other hand, is fraught with fear, with uncertainty and with the risk of failure.

Now that you know why, you can dance with it.

Seth Godin

Quotes that got me thinking

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“A brand is the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the off-strategy. It is defined by your best product as well as your worst product. It is defined by award-winning advertising as well as god-awful ads that somehow slipped through the cracks, got approved, and not surprisingly, sank into oblivion. It is defined by the accomplishments of your best employee – the shinning star in the company who can do no wrong – as well as by the mishaps of the worst hire you ever made. It is also defined by your receptionist and the music your customers are subjected to when placed on hold. For every grand and finely worded public statement by the CEO, the brand is also defined by derisory consumer comments overheard in the hallway of a chat room on the internet. Brands are sponges for content, for images, for fleeting feelings. They become psychological concepts held in the minds of the public, where they may stay forever.”

Source: “Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t” by Jim Collins

Quotes that got me thinking

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The Man in the Arena
Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic” delivered at the Sorbonne,
in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Feck Perfuction!

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One of my favourite Quotes from James Victore

Feck Perfuction

“I’m a closet perfectionist— an all or nothing at all kinda guy. But, I live in a half painted house. My studio is a construction site. My wife insists that she is NOT the maid. My 17 month old son seems to not speak English (or at least he chooses not to understand it). I don’t feel like I have enough time for my work and there just never seems to be enough elbow room or do-re-mi.

Those things could drive me crazy. But they don’t. I understand that my desire for ‘perfect’ is a trap. It’s a way to keep me from loving what is ‘now’ and real— and in it’s own way… perfect.

The idea ‘Feck Perfuction’ is not about lazy skills or settling for less than great, it’s about finding (sometimes creative) ways to accept your life as it is, not as you wish it were. Aspire, of course! Plan, study and improve, YES! But, accept as well.

Feck Perfuction is accepting that most of the time ‘perfect’ just doesn’t matter.“

James Victore