Quotes About Progress

If you're not uncomfortable, then you're probably stuck at an "acceptable level.

Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands….

To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don't cultivate this ability, you're likely to fall behind as technology advances. The

The good news about deliberate practice is that it will push you past this plateau and into a realm where you have little competition.

This is what you should experience in your own pursuit of "good." If you're not uncomfortable, then you're probably stuck at an "acceptable level.

We like to think of innovation as striking us in a stunning eureka moment, where you all at once change the way people see the world, leaping far ahead of our current understanding. I'm arguing that in reality, innovation is more systematic.

continuous and harsh feedback he received accelerated the growth of his ability.

Thoreau demonstrated similar concern, famously writing in Walden that "we are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

The important thing about little bets is that they're bite-sized. You try one. It takes a few months at most. It either succeeds or fails, but either way you get important feedback to guide your next steps. This

for the first time in human history solitude is starting to fade away altogether.

You have to get good before you can expect good work. As

We eagerly signed up for what Silicon Valley was selling, but soon realized that in doing so we were accidently degrading our humanity.

These are the knowledge work equivalents of speeding up the craft method of car manufacturing by giving the workers faster shoes.

I keep a tally of the total number of hours I've spent that month in a state of deliberate practice.

Pushing past what is comfortable, however is only one part of the deliberate-practice story; the other part is embracing honest feedback — even if it destroys what you thought was good.

Getting to the cutting edge of a field can be understood in these terms: This process builds up rare and valuable skills and therefore builds up your store of career capital. Similarly, identifying a compelling mission once you get to the cutting edge can be seen as investing your career capital to acquire a desirable trait in your career. In other words, mission is yet another example of career capital theory in action. If you want a mission, you need to first acquire capital.

At the end of every week he prints his numbers to see how well he achieved this goal, and then uses this feedback to guide himself in the week ahead.

Stop focusing on these little details," it told me. "Focus instead on becoming better.

The point of providing these details is to emphasize that intelligent machines are complicated and hard to master.* To join the group of those who can work well with these machines, therefore, requires that you hone your ability to master hard things. And because these technologies change rapidly, this process of mastering hard things never ends: You must be able to do it quickly, again and again.

To maximize your chances of success, you should deploy small, concrete experiments that return concrete feedback.

People ask me how I funded my business," he said. "I tell them first I sold one CD, which gave me enough money to sell two." It grew from there.

the big red Xs on the calendar.

Asimismo, una persona que trabajaba en el área del marketing en los años noventa quizá no imaginó que hoy debe tener sólidos conocimientos en análisis digital. Por lo tanto, para seguir siendo valiosos en nuestra economía, es necesario que dominemos el arte de aprender rápidamente cosas complicadas. Esta labor exige un trabajo profundo. Si no cultivamos esta aptitud, nos quedaremos atrás conforme vaya avanzando la tecnología.

entrenched companies are often unexpectedly dethroned by start-ups that begin with cheap offerings at the low end of the market, but then, over time, improve their cheap products just enough to begin to steal high-end market share. Grove recognized that Intel faced this threat from low-end processors produced by upstart companies like AMD and Cyrix.