Quotes from Richard Koch

Anything that just yielded an average degree of satisfaction for the time or effort should be discarded

Pursue those few things where you are amazingly better than others and that you enjoy most.

All the time we tell ourselves stories about ourselves. We have to: there is no objective truth. You might as well choose positive rather than negative stories. By doing so you will increase the sum of human happiness, starting with yourself and radiating out to others.

Scientists working with relativity, or quantum theory, or modern mathematics, or systems theory, or chaos, or complexity are at the top of their fields.

I give people the latitude to express their imagination.

You are more likely to win again where you have won before. You are more likely to win when you are selective about the races you enter.

Chose the niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming and acknowledged leader.

It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways.

Conventional wisdom is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. 80/20 wisdom is to choose a basket carefully, load all your eggs into it, and then watch it like a hawk.

Hard work leads to low returns. Insight and doing what we want lead to high returns.

The few things that work fantastically well should be identified, cultivated, nurtured, and multiplied.

The key is to work out the few things that are really important, and the few methods that will give us what we really want.

Instead of expending time to train yourself not to be afraid of snakes, avoid them altogether.

The 80/20 Principle, like the truth, can make you free. You can work less. At the same time, you can earn more and enjoy more. The only price is that you need to do some serious 80/20 thinking.

The road to hell is paved with the pursuit of volume. Volume leads to marginal products, marginal customers, and greatly increased managerial complexity.

Most of us don't work out what we want. And most of us end up with lopsided lives as a result.

Where a chunk of business is simple, the chances are that it is.

Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many.