Quotes About Performance

The business model should be such that the employees needed possess the lowest possible level of skill necessary to fulfill the functions for which each is intended.

The problem with meeting expectations is that it's not remarkable.

Organizing around the average, then, is too expensive. Organizing around average means that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers.

It is the nature of our lives, Madeleine. If you dance in the limelight, it's only natural that people will look at you. You can't expect otherwise.

All that is missing is the dancing bear.

It's important to be aware of how multitasking can stimulate us into mindlessness, giving the illusion of productivity while stealing our focus and harming performance. "When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit," is ancient wisdom.

In debate he thought high and aimed low.

The roles Reagan played in his earlier career were an apprenticeship for his original contribution to American government, the creation of a "performance president" who fashioned illusion (a tough leader who had learned to throw a crisp salute) from inauthenticity (almost persuading himself that he had been present when inmates were freed from concentration camps).

That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like the disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.

He'd been just like all of the other performers in the world. He'd wanted to be universally loved. He wasn't all that different from Victor, Thomas, or even Junior. They all got onstage and wanted the audience to believe in them. They all wanted the audience to throw their room keys, panties, confessions, flowers, and songs onstage. They wanted the audience to trust them with their secrets.

Afterward I sat at a picnic table, feeling that post-performance emotional letdown (that I would later, thanks to Brene Brown, be able to more accurately describe as a vulnerability hangover), and smiled when Jim sat across from me.

The nightmare is you spend the rest of your life being funny at parties and then people say, 'Why didn't you do that when you were on television?'

The reality is that the shows kind of disconnect from the songs a little bit. You're playing the songs, but they take on a life of their own.

Life is like The Muppet Show, but instead of Muppets there's anxiety.

My job is to focus on bringing characters to life in an honest and personal way.

...the routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit.

Via Dolorosa is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and Ill never act again.

To see great actors bring it all to life us exhilerating

I've managed to keep my career going in a way that suits me. I'll perform, and then I'll go home to my actual life, and I've never been so visible.

If you take every challenge everyone has in their life and multiply it in severity you get what it's like in the life of an actor.

'The Show' was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life.

Standup is tough; if you are going through a hard period in your life, it is very hard to get up in front of people and be the happy guy in the room.

Now I'm having the time of my life being on the road with one of the world's all-time great big bands, and performing with symphonies. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Some people fake their death, I'm faking my life.