A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.
Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.
This is not a book for the wild-haired crazies your company keeps in a corner. It is a book for you, your boss, and your employees, because the best future available to us is a future where you contriubute your true self and your best work. Are you up for that?
Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it.
Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you must seek out.
The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor.
Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.
The essential thing to know about the Dip is that it’s there. Knowing that you’re facing a Dip is the first step in getting through it.
Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
All marketers are storytellers. Only the losers are liars.
On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you’re doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you’re mediocre. You’re free to contribute.
Our economy now rewards artists far more than any other economy in history ever has.
Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.
The only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something.
You can listen to what people say, sure. But you will be far more effective if you listen to what people do.
The first step toward becoming extraordinary is, of course, to stop being ordinary.
The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
Set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them.