Most Impactful Book Quotes – Q3 2017
Below you will find a series of quotes I have found particularly impactful over the past three months. Feel free to leave a comment to let me know what you think or share your own book quotes that have recently impacted you.
“When values are clear, decisions are easy.” -Roy Disney, mentioned in The Disney Way by Bill Capidagli and Lynn Jackson
“Not long ago, we were showing an executive from British Petroleum around Disney World. ‘What a pity that Walt Disney did not live to see this place,’ he remarked. 'But he did see it,’ we said. ‘That’s why it’s here.’” -Bill Capidagli and Lynn Jackson, from The Disney Way
“In many ways, your job as the boss is to set and uphold a quality bar. That can feel harsh in the short term, but in the long run the only thing that is meaner is lowering the bar." -Kim Scott, from Radical Candor
“The essence of leadership is not getting overwhelmed by circumstances.” -Kim Scott, from Radical Candor
“If you want the truth about what makes us different, it’s this: We are genuinely customer-centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented and we genuinely like to invent. Most companies are not those things. They are focused on the competitor, rather than the customer. They want to work on things that will pay dividends in two or three years, and if they don’t work in two or three years they will move on to something else. And they prefer to be close-followers rather than inventors, because it’s safer. So if you want to capture the truth about Amazon, that is why we are different. Very few companies have all of those three elements.” -Jeff Bezos, mentioned in The Everything Store by Brad Stone
“There are two kinds of retailers: there are those folks who work to figure how to charge more, and there are companies that work to figure how to charge less, and we are going to be the second, full-stop.” -Jeff Bezos, mentioned in The Everything Store by Brad Stone
“All leaders must have two things: they must have a vision of the world that does not exist and they must have the ability to communicate it.” -Simon Sinek, from Start with Why
“Great organizations become great because the people inside the organization feel protected. The strong sense of culture creates a sense of belonging and acts like a net. People come to work knowing that their bosses, colleagues and the organization as a whole will look out for them. This results in reciprocal behavior. Individual decisions, efforts and behaviors that support, benefit and protect the long-term interest of the organization as a whole.” -Simon Sinek, from Start with Why
“Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe...Two rules of effectiveness: (1) Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. (2) Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important." -Timothy Ferriss, from The 4-Hour Workweek
“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” -Herbert Simon, mentioned in The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
“Most endeavors are like learning to speak a foreign language: to be correct 95% of the time requires six months of concentrated effort, whereas to be correct 98% of the time requires 20-30 years. Focus on great for a few things and good enough for the rest.” -Timothy Ferriss, from The 4-Hour Workweek
"I urge you to be curious enough to want to understand how the people who see things differently from you came to see them that way." -Ray Dalio, from Principles: Life and Work
“In retrospect, my crash was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it gave me the humility I needed to balance my aggressiveness. I learned a great fear of being wrong that shifted my mind-set from thinking ‘I’m right’ to asking myself ‘How do I know I’m right?’ And I saw clearly that the best way to answer this questions is by finding other independent thinkers who are on the same mission as me and who see things differently from me. By engaging them in thoughtful disagreement, I’d be able to understand their reasoning and have them stress-test mine. That way, we can all raise our probability of being right.” -Ray Dalio, from Principles: Life and Work
“Self-reflection is the quality that most differentiates those who evolve quickly from those who don’t. Remember: Pain + Reflection = Progress.” -Ray Dalio, from Principles: Life and Work
“It seems to me that if you look back on yourself a year ago and aren’t shocked by how stupid you were, you haven’t learned much.” -Ray Dalio, from Principles: Life and Work
