Quotes About Excellence

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the "real world"? Work harder than everyone else. Of course, that is easy when you love your job. But you might not love your first, or second, or even third job. That doesn't matter. Work harder than everyone else. In order to get the job you love or start the company you want, you have to build your résumé, your reputation, and your bank account. The best way to do that: Outwork them all.

Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for "realistic" goals, paradoxically making them the most time-and energy-consuming.

If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.

Work hard to beat the competition." The truth is that competition is the opposite of creativity. If I am working hard to beat the competition, it actually prevents me from thinking creatively to make all concepts of competition obsolete.

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life. —JOHN F. KENNEDY

Success is: Do your kids remember you for being the best dad? Not the dad who gave them everything, but will they be able to tell you anything one day? Will they able to call you out of the blue, any day, no matter what? Are you the first person they want to ask for advice? And at the same time, can you hit it out of the park in whatever it is you decide to do, as a lawyer, as a doctor, as a stockbroker, as a whatever?

Christopher Sommer Tótem: Halcón «Si los mejores del mundo se parten el culo para hacerse fuertes, ¿por qué no lo haces tú?» Christopher Sommer (IG/FB: @GymnasticBodies, gymnasticbodies.com) fue entrenador del Equipo Nacional de Gimnasia Artística de Estados Unidos y es fundador del sistema de entrenamiento GymnasticBodies

Tom Peters is still reinventing himself." His most recent book is The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.

My two cents: Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. It's the quality of your next five-minute conversation. It's the quality of, yes, your next email. Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!

Si los mejores del mundo se parten el culo para hacerse fuertes, ¿por qué no lo haces tú?»

Most see excellence as some grand aspiration. Wrong. Dead wrong. My two cents: Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. It's the quality of your next five-minute conversation. It's the quality of, yes, your next email. Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!

Aprende de los grandes, no de la competencia

Focus on great for a few things and good enough for the rest. Perfection is a good ideal and direction to have, but recognize it for what it is: an impossible destination.

And also, it's not about being good; it's about being great. Because what I find, the older I get, is that a lot of people are good, and a lot of people are smart, and a lot of people are clever. But not a lot of people give you their soul when they perform.

si no haces algo bien, no lo hagas a menos que estés dispuesto a dedicar tiempo a mejorarlo.

But if you don't cultivate 'turning it on' as a way of life in the little moments—and there are hundreds of times more little moments than big—then there's no chance in the big moments. . . . I believe that when you're not cultivating quality, you're essentially cultivating sloppiness.

adopta el hábito más importante de quienes destacan y disfrutan con ello: actuar.

It doesn't take much to seem superhuman and appear "successful" to nearly everyone around you. In fact, you just need one rule: What you do is more important than how you do everything else, and doing something well does not make it important.

Excellence is the next five minutes, improvement is the next five minutes, happiness is the next five minutes. This doesn't mean you ignore planning. I encourage you to make huge, ambitious plans. Just remember that the big-beyond-belief things are accomplished when you deconstruct them into the smallest possible pieces and focus on each "moment of impact," one step at a time. I've had a life full of doubts . . . mostly for no good reason.

Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In

If it's not ready, we're not going to send it out, and just hope they don't notice that it's not that good. We'll fix it. We'll do something else, but don't try to slip by something that you know is below the standard.' You

Hold the standard. Ask for help. Fix it. Do whatever's necessary. But don't cheat.

How do you know if you have A-players on your project team? You know it if they don't just accept the strategy you hand them. They should suggest modifications to the plan based on their closeness to the details.

In the information-communication civilization of the 21st Century, creativity and mental excellence will become the ethical norm. The world will be too dynamic, complex, and diversified, too cross-linked by the global immediacies of modern (quantum) communication, for stability of thought or dependability of behaviour to be successful.