Quotes About Effort

If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.

One thing that continually astonishes me is the degree to which we're influenced by sheer convenience. The amount of effort, time, or decision making required by an action has a huge influence on habit formation.

It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light." —G. K. Chesterton What's

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many people decide to improve their habits, they don't begin by looking where their keys are; they begin by looking in an easy spot.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules."—Anthony Trollope

Some habits become completely automatic; others require some effort, always. What matters is to be moving in the right direction. There's a great satisfaction in knowing that we've made good use of our days, that we've lived up to our expectations of ourselves. The true aim is not to break bad habits, but to outgrow them. With the bright light of attention, we can recognize and acknowledge them, and leave them behind.

People assume that a person who acts happy must feel happy, but although it's in the very nature of happiness to seem effortless and spontaneous, it often takes great skill.

As novelist Anthony Trollope observed, "A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but everyday is a clean state and a fresh opportunity.

It's hard to do even simple things well, and most things aren't simple. As

It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light

I remind myself, Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don't do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner that I never host.

If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.        Over-the-counter

course it's not enough to sit around wanting to be happy; you must make the effort to take steps toward happiness by acting with more love, finding work you enjoy

We set out to be wrecked.

It takes work to be happier, but it's gratifying work.

argue, you're better off pursuing a profession that comes easily and that you love, because that's where you'll be more eager to practice and thereby earn a competitive advantage. I love writing

discouraging as he'd been, hadn't actually hit on my real worry about my project: Was it supremely self-centered to spend so much effort on my own happiness?

I was comforted by the words of my model Benjamin Franklin, who reflected of his own chart: On the whole, though I never arrived at perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet as I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it.

Studies show that if you reward people for doing an activity, they often stop doing it for fun; being paid turns it into "work." Parents, for example, are warned not to reward children for reading—they're teaching kids to read for a reward, not for pleasure.

nothing was insurmountable if I did what I knew ought to be done, little by little. My

When possible, the brain makes a behavior into a habit, which saves effort and therefore gives us more capacity to deal with complex, novel, or urgent matters.

Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.