Category: quotes

  • Check yourself

    The scientific literature shows that hunger, anger, loneliness, tiredness, pain, and stress are common “preconditions for poor decision making.” So Shubin Stein uses an acronym, HALT-PS, as a reminder to pause when those factors might be impairing his judgment and postpone important decisions until he’s in a state in which his brain is more likely to function well. This is our seventh technique for reducing avoidable stupidity.

    -William Green in Richer, Wiser, Happier

  • Avoid Idiocy

    “I don’t have any wonderful insights that other people don’t have. I just have slightly more consistently than others avoided idiocy. Other people are trying to be smart. All I’m trying to be is non-idiotic. I find that all you have to do to get ahead in life is to be non-idiotic and live a long time. It’s harder to be non-idiotic than most people think.”

    -Charlie Munger, as quoted by William Green in Richer, Wiser, Happier

  • On Communicating

    6. Prepare your intent.

    A little preparation goes a long way toward saying what you wanted to say and having a conversation achieve its intended impact. Don’t prepare a speech; develop an understanding of what the focus of a conversation needs to be (in order for people to hear the message) and how you will accomplish this. Your communication will be more persuasive and on point when you prepare your intent ahead of time.

    2. Talk so people will listen.

    Great communicators read their audience (groups and individuals) carefully to ensure they aren’t wasting their breath on a message that people aren’t ready to hear. Talking so people will listen means you adjust your message on the fly to stay with your audience (what they’re ready to hear and how they’re ready to hear it). Droning on to ensure you’ve said what you wanted to say does not have the same effect on people as engaging them in a meaningful dialogue in which there is an exchange of ideas. Resist the urge to drive your point home at all costs. When your talking leads to people asking good questions, you know you’re on the right track.

    – Travis Bradberry, 8 Secrets of Great Communicators

  • Fixing our Unhealthy Obsession with Work Email

    “Creative thinking requires a relaxed state, the ability to think through options at a slow pace and the openness to explore different alternatives without fear.”

    Fixing our Unhealthy Obsession with Work Email
  • The single greatest danger

    The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom. 

    -Peter Thiel, Zero to One
  • The Compass and the Clock

    Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass.  The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities — what we do with, and how we manage our time.  The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction — what we feel is important and how we lead our lives.  In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of ‘time management.

    – Steven R Covey, First Things First
  • The Signal and the Noise

    As a new medium becomes popular its signal-to-noise ratio will fall to a level that renders the medium useless.

  • HTML-first

    startupljackson:

    There’s a raging debate on the twitters about whether it makes sense to build for Android vs iOS first. The real answer is that it depends on the problem you’re solving and the user’s context. But most of the time, neither is correct. Most startups should be be building for the web.

    – HTML-first for your Startup

  • Or, Better Yet, Be Great Public Companies

    …if you want your new tech corridor to play in the big leagues with Silicon Valley and its VCs, don’t stress about capital for entrepreneurs to create companies. Stress about capital that will buy provide exits for companies or that can get them to a liquidity creating IPO.

    Marc Cuban, blogmaverick
  • Change

    To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

    Sir Winston Churchill as quoted by Michael Dobbs in House of Cards