Quotes About Achievement

The 4 Disciplines of Execution,

the big red Xs on the calendar.

Si queremos triunfar, debemos producir lo mejor que nuestras capacidades nos permitan producir: se trata de una labor que requiere trabajo profundo.

the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done.

You need to get good in order to get good things in your working life, and the craftsman mindset is focused on achieving exactly this goal.

given week, the higher the subject's life satisfaction. Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging. There

Deep work is important, in other words, not because distraction is evil, but because it enabled Bill Gates to start a billion-dollar industry in less than a semester.

eudaimonia (a state in which you're achieving your full human potential),

The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish." They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of "wildly important goals.

Biology, like any high-stakes academic field, is demanding. Because of this it has a reputation for turning young professors into curmudgeons who adopt a masochistic brand of workaholism, in which relaxation becomes a sign of failure and the accomplishments of peers become tragedies.

An increasing number of individuals in our economy are now competing with the rock stars of their sectors.

Discipline #3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

People play differently when they're keeping score," the 4DX authors explain.

the individual's scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual's current deep work hour count.

They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, who has no real effect in the world. But craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one's failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.

easy to identify the relevant lead measure: time spent in a state of deep work dedicated toward your wildly important goal.

You need to get good in order to get good things in your working life.

To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you're capable of producing—a task that requires depth.

Identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours.

I had reached the level of expertise you would expect from someone who had played an instrument seriously for the last six years. But this is what I find fascinating: Compared to Jordan Tice's ability at this same age, I was mediocre.

Don't follow your passion; rather, let it follow in your quest to become, in the words of my favorite Steve Martin quote, "so good that they can't ignore you.

My suggestion is that you try to learn and apply one new skill every week, over a period of six weeks. Start with easy projects like those suggested above, but as soon as you feel the challenge wane, ramp up the complication of the skills and steps involved.

Soon after going public, he was featured on the cover of the Atlantic, interviewed on 60 Minutes and PBS NewsHour, and was whisked off to give a TED talk.

if you just show up and work hard, you'll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better. This