78 Quotations Found

In life and business, success is about making good trade-offs. It’s not about having it all. It’s about having what matters most. We all value different things. That’s what makes life rich. Opportunity cost is what you give up when choosing; trade-offs are the balancing acts you perform when deciding between competing options. They’re two sides of the same ­ coin—whenever you make a ­trade-­off, … [ Read more ]

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

A large part of wisdom is knowing what to ignore. A large part of expertise is knowing where to place your attention.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Success / Failure, Wisdom

Linear games are won by working harder than others. And the harder other people work, the higher the bar. You need to work harder and harder, just to stay in the same relative position.

Asymmetry is different. Even people who understand asymmetry consistently underestimate its power.

Positive asymmetry happens when you have a lot of upside and little downside. Negative asymmetry is when you have little upside … [ Read more ]

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Success / Failure, Trust

We have to be willing to confront the world as it is, not as we want it to be if we’re going to be successful.

Author: Barry McCarthy | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Too many people settle for dumb luck and hope for the best, when they should be orchestrating smart luck. Although success in work and life often appears to be the result of random events, in truth the lucky ones often managed the broader context better. Some people may attribute their success to a few key breaks, such as a professor who helped them or an … [ Read more ]

Author: Paul J.H. Schoemaker | Source: Management Business Review (MBR) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.

Author: Derek Sivers | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Career, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

The most important step in becoming successful in anything is to first become interested in it.

Author: Sir William Osler | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Being contrarian isn’t hard – anyone can say the opposite of what most people believe. But being contrarian and right is extremely difficult. Those who can both go against the crowd and be correct achieve outsized rewards.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Any energy that goes into what doesn’t matter comes at the expense of what does.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Success / Failure

A critical quality for success is the ability to change your mind. A lot of ideas are bad until they’re good. And a lot of ideas are good until they’re bad.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

In expert tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are won; in amateur tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are lost. In other words, professional tennis is a Winner’s Game – the final outcome is determined by the activities of the winner – and amateur tennis is a Loser’s Game – the final outcome is determined by the activities of the loser. … [ Read more ]

Author: Simon Ramo | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

The person who cannot take advantage of an opportunity is no better off than the person that never sees it in the first place.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

People have a funny way of looking at the world in the way they cut the data. They’re not honest with themselves… they are not looking at the way the world really is as opposed to the way that they want the world to be. This is the internal war that people have to fight to get to what the truth is and ultimately what … [ Read more ]

Author: Steve Cohen | Subjects: Concepts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Success / Failure, Truth | Right | Wrong

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Author: Elinor Smith | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Working smarter is the most valuable form of working harder.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

There is nothing that gets in the way of success more than avoidance. We avoid hard conversations. We avoid certain people. We avoid hard decisions. We avoid evidence that contradicts what we think. We avoid starting a project until we’re certain of the outcome.

To justify our avoidance, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we’re noble — we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. … [ Read more ]

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Success / Failure

If you let motivation dictate your actions, inertia conspires to keep you in place. Action creates progress. Progress creates momentum. Momentum creates motivation.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Psychology | Behavior, Success / Failure

The biggest generator of long-term results is learning to do things when you don’t feel like doing them.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.

Author: F. M. Alexander | Subjects: Career, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Success / Failure

The myth of the self-made individual is one of the more sacred fictions of modern life. It endures because it promises us a just and happy reward that is equal to our persistence, resourcefulness and hard work. Like most irresistible promises, it deserves our skepticism.

It’s not impossible to achieve success on your own to the point where it could be accurately described as self-made. … [ Read more ]

Author: Marshall Goldsmith | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure