There is an inescapable setup time for all tasks, large or minuscule in scale. It is often the same for one as it is for a hundred. There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted.
— Timothy Ferris, 4-Hour Work Week
Of course, I interrupted the book I was reading to post and Tweet this.
Focus is hard.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Yesterday I quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, “A man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.” In today’s quote, Eleanor Roosevelt conveys the same concept in a different voice.
Talent is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher
My hosannahs have all be forged in the crucible of doubt.
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
— Carl Sagan, astronomer and author (1934-1996)
A job done by half is never done right.
— Mom
Those “best leaders” excel at six skills . . . They have a winning attitude, a passion for customers, an ability to collaborate across boundaries, a global mindset, an ability to leverage diversity and a talent for working just “fast enough” — getting the right balance point between overly rapid decision-making and paralysis by analysis.
— Ann Livermore, HP Executive VP
From a Knowledge at Wharton article