Quotes About Achievement

The goal of the machine," David explained, "is to create a setting where the users can get into a state of deep human flourishing—creating work that's at the absolute extent of their personal abilities." It

Many people incorrectly believe that coming up with a mission is the easy part (it's something that just happens in a moment of inspiration) and that what's hard is mustering the courage to pursue it. Rule #4 argued the opposite. It said that real missions—those that you can build a career around—require that you build up extensive amounts of expertise before they can be identified.

Assuming that you could probably list somewhere between ten and fifteen distinct and potentially beneficial activities for each of your life goals, this law says that it's the top two or three such activities—the number that this strategy asks you to focus on—that make most of the difference in whether or not you succeed with the goal.

to your work, then he will close the deal. To

Control that's acquired without career capital is not sustainable.

Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance

Según declaran los autores de The 4 Disciplines of Execution, «cuanto más queremos abarcar, menos logramos hacer».

If you want to become a superstar, mastering the relevant skills is necessary, but not sufficient. You

In the preceding discipline, I argued that for an individual focused on deep work, hours spent working deeply should be the lead measure. It follows, therefore, that the individual's scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual's current deep work hour count.

be sure to also give yourself a specific time frame to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open-ended slog.

Men of genius themselves were great only by bringing all their power to bear on the point on which they had decided to show their full measure.

First, it allowed me to connect, at a visceral level, accumulated deep work hours and tangible results. Second, it helped calibrate my expectations for how many hours of deep work were needed per result. This reality (which was larger than I first assumed) helped spur me to squeeze more such hours into each week.

In response to Rose's trademark ambiguous grunt, Martin defended his advice: "If somebody's thinking, 'How can I be really good?' people are going to come to you.

It was tentativeness, not boldness, that transformed Pardis's general mission into a specific success.

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.

The Intellectual Life, "Men of genius themselves were great only by bringing all their power to bear on the point on which they had decided to show their full measure." Ericsson couldn't have said it better.)

No one ever changed the world, created a new industry, or amassed a fortune due to their fast email response time.

If you want a mission, you need to first acquire capital. If you skip this step, you might end up like Sarah and Jane: with lots of enthusiasm but very little to show for it. Not

you don't produce, you won't thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.

This provides another general observation for joining the ranks of winners in our economy: If you don't produce, you won't thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.

Most individuals who start as active professionals… change their behavior and increase their performance for a limited time until they reach an acceptable level. Beyond this point, however, further improvements appear to be unpredictable and the number of years of work… is a poor predictor of attained performance." Put another way, if you just show up and work hard, you'll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better.

One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.

The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile." Csikszentmihalyi calls this mental state flow

A commitment to deep work is not a moral stance and it's not a philosophical statement—it is instead a pragmatic recognition that the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done.