Frogs Key Quotes

The Key to Success is Action

The spell was simple and I'd said half of it before she even figured out that it was a spell. Since you like bubbles so, In a bubble you must go. In that bubble you will stay Till your bubbles go away. Sound can't pass from inside out Even if you scream or shout. If you want to be set free, End your spell, that's the key

The French are completely without scruples, energy or valor - the Great War castrated them and left them diminished, whiney, mistaking bickering for debate and shrillness for eloquence, they are a nation in such effete decline that Shickelgrubber, when he finally attacks them, might be dancing with the keys to Paris in his hand after a week or two of puny skirmishing.

Gavin stood within the trees, observing her from the shadows. He watched the basket rise to her nose as she closed her eyes to sniff at its contents. A smile told him it smelled delicious, but she didn’t open the container to pinch off a sample. Instead, the basket lowered to swing at her side as it had previously done. All at once the air was filled with soft singing--a sweet, merry tune comprised of ludicrous lyrics. It was impossible not to grin at the words. “Rainbows paint the sky ‘til the sun melts their colors. Swinging in the wind, whiskered cattails purr. The pigs gallop by and snort at the moon, While frogs kiss the lizards and princesses too.”

She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile.

Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.

The potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important a task really is to you and to your company.

I thought of kissing Astrid under the fire escape. I thought of Norm’s rusty microbus and of his father, Cicero, sitting on the busted-down sofa in his old trailer, rolling dope in Zig-Zag papers and telling me if I wanted to get my license first crack out of the basket, I’d better cut my fucking hair. I thought of playing teen dances at the Auburn RolloDrome, and how we never stopped when the inevitable fights broke out between the kids from Edward Little and Lisbon High, or those from Lewiston High and St. Dom’s; we just turned it up louder. I thought of how life had been before I realized I was a frog in a pot. I shouted: “One, two, you-know-what-to-do!” We kicked it in. Key of E. All that shit starts in E.

Continually upgrade your skills in your key result areas. Remember, however good you are today, your knowledge and skills are becoming obsolete at a rapid rate. As Pat Riley, the basketball coach, said, “Anytime you stop striving to get better, you’re bound to get worse.

The key result areas of management are: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Delegating, Supervising, Measuring and Reporting. These are the results that a manager must get to succeed in his or her area of responsibility. A weakness in any one of these areas can lead to underachievement and failure as a manager.

Have you ever suddenly understood something in a “flash of recognition”? Have you ever known of someone who became an “overnight success”? Here is a great secret that holds the key to great accomplishment: both that “sudden flash” and that “overnight success” were the final, breakthrough results of a long, patient process of edge upon edge upon edge. Any time you see what looks like a breakthrough, it is always the end result of a long series of little things, done consistently over time. No success is immediate or instantaneous; no collapse is sudden or precipitous. They are both products of the slight edge. Now, I’m not saying that quantum leaps are a myth because they don’t really happen. As a matter of fact, they do happen. Just not the way people think they do. The term comes from particle physics, and here’s what it means in reality: a true quantum leap is what happens when a subatomic particle suddenly jumps to a higher level of energy. But it happens as a result of the gradual buildup of potential caused by energy being applied to that particle over time. In other words, it doesn’t “just suddenly happen.” An actual quantum leap is something that finally happens after a lengthy accumulation of slight-edge effort. Exactly the way the water hyacinth moves from day twenty-nine to day thirty. Exactly the way the frog’s certain death by drowning was “suddenly” transformed into salvation by butter. A real-life quantum leap is not Superman leaping a tall building. A real quantum leap is Edison perfecting the electric light bulb after a thousand patient efforts—and then transforming the world with it.

During this time my father was in a labor camp, for the crime of wanting to leave the country, and my mother struggled to care for us, alone and with few provisions. One day she went out to the back patio to do the wash and saw a cute little frog sitting by the door to the kitchen. My mother has always liked frogs, and this frog by the kitchen door gave her an idea. She began to spin wonderful stories about a crazy, adventurous frog named Antonica who would overcome great odds with her daring and creativity. Antonica helped us dream of freedom and possibilities. These exciting tales were reserved for mealtime. We ate until our bowls were empty, distracted from the bland food by the flavor of Antonica’s world. Mamina knew her children were well nourished, comforted, and prepared for the challenges and adventures to come. In 2007, I was preparing to host a TV show on a local station and was struggling with self-doubt. With encouragement and coaching from a friend, I finally realized that I had been preparing for this opportunity most of my life. All I needed was confidence in myself, the kind of confidence Antonica had taught me about, way back in Cuba. Through this process of self-discovery, the idea came to me to start cooking with my mother. We all loved my Mamina’s cooking, but I had never been interested in learning to cook like her. I began to write down her recipes and take pictures of her delicious food. I also started to write down the stories I had heard from my parents, of our lives in Cuba and coming to the United States. At some point I realized I had ninety recipes. This is a significant number to Cuban exiles, as there are ninety miles between Cuba and Key West, Florida. A relatively short distance, but oh, so far! My effort to grow closer to my mother through cooking became another dream waiting to be fulfilled, through a book called 90 Miles 90 Recipes: My Journey to Understanding. My mother now seemed as significant as our journey to the United States. While learning how she orchestrated these flavors, I began to understand my mother as a woman with many gifts. Through cooking together, my appreciation for her has grown. I’ve come to realize why feeding everyone was so important to her. Nourishing the body is part of nurturing the soul. My mother is doing very poorly now. Most of my time in the last few months has been dedicated to caring for her. Though our book has not yet been published, it has already proven valuable. It has taught me about dreams from a different perspective—helping me recognize that the lives my sisters and I enjoy are the realization of my parents’ dream of freedom and opportunity for them, and especially for us.

A major reason for procrastination is a feeling of inadequacy, a lack of confidence, or an inability in a key area of a task. Feeling weak or deficient in a single area is enough to discourage you from starting the job at all.

The starting point of high performance is for you to identify the key result areas of your work. Discuss them with your boss. Make a list of your most important output responsibilities, and make sure that the people above you, on the same level as you, and below you are in agreement with it. For

The ability to concentrate singlemindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life. This key insight is the heart and soul of this book. This

The key to success is action.

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, a world-famous physician who practiced in France, England, and the United States in the mid-1800s. He claimed that he “rejuvenated sexual prowess after eating extracts of monkey testis.” Those who adhere to Mark Twain’s suggestion that you should eat a live frog for breakfast, because nothing worse can then happen to your day, clearly haven’t reckoned with Brown-Séquard’s approach to self-improvement!

Hello mons! Hello mons! Lonely sky sailors! May the yellow night frog leave you many droppings of peace and prosperity.” I

One of the keys to your living a wonderful life, having a successful career, and feeling terrific about yourself is to develop the habit of starting and finishing important jobs.

take every course and seminar available on the key skills that can help you.

Practice is the key to mastering any skill.

Perhaps the most important word in the world of work is “contribution.” Your rewards, both financial and emotional, will always be in direct proportion to your results, to the value of your contribution. If you want to increase your rewards, you must focus on increasing the value of what you do. You must dedicate yourself to contributing more results to your company. And there are always three key tasks that contribute the most.

Consistently in implementing the war on drugs, police agencies have made clear that “you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince” – very large numbers of traffic stops would have to occur before an officer might interdict a significant drug shipment (see Webb 2007). Unstated in that calculation was that many Americans would be subjected to police investigations so that a small number could be searched or arrested in the hope of finding a large cache of drugs. Those who were momentarily detained were said by the Court to have suffered only a trivial inconvenience. The key element in this targeting, which kept it hidden for so long from those who might have objected, was that middle-class Americans were largely exempt from its consequences. On the other hand, members of minority groups, especially young men, were subjected to a lot more than just an occasional trivial inconvenience. Police routinely targeted poor neighborhoods, individuals with certain forms of dress, males rather than females, younger people rather than older ones, and minorities rather than whites.

You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration, which are all learnable. They are decision, discipline, and determination.

Second, take every course and seminar available on the key skills that can help you. Attend the conventions and business meetings of your profession or occupation. Go to the sessions and workshops. Sit up front and take notes. Purchase the audio recordings of the programs. Dedicate yourself to becoming one of the most knowledgeable and competent people in your field. Third,

A key result area is defined as something for which you are completely responsible.

Seeing small pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle in isolation, no matter how hi-def the picture, is insufficient to grapple with humanity’s greatest challenges. We have long known the laws of thermodynamics, but struggle to predict the spread of a forest fire. We know how cells work, but can’t predict the poetry that will be written by a human made up of them. The frog’s-eye view of individual parts is not enough. A healthy ecosystem needs biodiversity. Even now, even in endeavors that engender specialization unprecedented in history, there are beacons of breadth. Individuals who live by historian Arnold Toynbee’s words that “no tool is omnicompetent. There is no such thing as a master-key that will unlock all doors.” Rather than wielding a single tool, they have managed to collect and protect an entire toolshed, and they show the power of range in a hyperspecialized world.

the assignment in an excellent fashion. Give yourself a grade from one to ten on each one. And then determine the one key skill that, if you did it in an excellent manner, would help you the most in all your classes. 2.Take this list to your teacher or advisor and discuss it with him or her. Invite honest feedback and appraisal. You can only get better when you are open to the constructive input of other people. Discuss your conclusions with your parents or peers.

The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life.

1. Break Down Big Goals into Manageable Next Steps Don’t fall for the old “eat that frog” trap. While your goal should begin in the Discomfort Zone, your next step should be in the Comfort Zone. Do the easiest task first. If you get stumped or stuck, seek outside help. You want to build momentum early with quick wins. 2. Utilize Activation Triggers Brainstorm the best Activation Triggers for you. Remember to leverage what comes easy to do what’s hard. Don’t rely on your willpower in the moment. Instead, optimize your Activation Triggers with elimination, automation, and delegation. You’re going to face obstacles, so anticipate those and determine the best if/then response in advance. The idea is to plan your workarounds before an obstacle derails you. If you don’t have it right to begin with, experiment until you nail it. 3. Schedule Regular Goal Reviews For your daily review, scan your list of goals. You want to keep your goals fresh in your mind and also think through a few specific tasks for the day that will bring you closer to achieving them. I call these my Daily Big 3. For your weekly review, scan your goals with a special focus on your key motivations. Conduct a quick After-Action Review of the prior week. Review the next actions for each of your goals and determine what three outcomes you must reach in the coming week to achieve them. I call these my Weekly Big 3, and I use them to determine my Daily Big 3. For the quarterly review, I recommend walking through the five Best Year Ever steps again. But the key is to (1) rejoice if you’ve completed your goal or passed a milestone, (2) recommit if you haven’t, (3) revise the goal if you can’t recommit to it, (4) remove the goal if you can’t revise, and finally, (5) replace the goal with another you want to achieve.

The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success,

The key result areas of management are planning, organizing, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, and reporting.

HILL Perhaps the most outwardly identifiable quality of high-performing men and women is action orientation. They are in a hurry to get their key tasks completed. Highly productive people take the time to think, plan, and set priorities. They then launch quickly and strongly toward their goals and objectives. They work steadily, smoothly, and continuously. When working with the massive pressure to achieve at the highest levels in school, developing this sense of urgency can be a powerful mindset shift that will propel you forward.

Time management is really life management, personal management. It is really taking control of the sequence of events. Time management is taking control over what you do next. And you are always free to choose the task that you will do next. Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.

Think on Paper The power of this technique lies in its simplicity. Here’s how it works: You start with a list of everything you have to do for the coming day. Think on paper. You then place an A, B, C, D, or E next to each item on your list before you begin the first task. An “A” item is defined as something that is very important, something that you must do. This is a task that will have serious positive or negative consequences if you do it or fail to do it, like visiting a key customer or finishing a report that your boss needs for an upcoming board meeting. These items are the frogs of your life. If you have more than one A task, you prioritize these tasks by writing “A-1,” “A-2,” “A-3,” and so on in front of each item. Your A-1 task is your biggest, ugliest frog of all. ”Shoulds” versus “Musts” A “B” item is defined as a task that you should do. But it has only mild consequences. These are the tadpoles of your work life. This means that someone may be unhappy or inconvenienced if you don’t do one of these tasks, but it is nowhere as important as an A task. Returning an unimportant telephone message or reviewing your e-mail would be a B task. The rule is that you should never do a B task when an A task is left undone. You should never be distracted by a tadpole when a big frog is sitting there waiting to be eaten. A “C” task is defined as something that would be nice to do but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not. C tasks include phoning a friend, having coffee or lunch with a coworker, and completing some personal business during work hours. These sorts of activities have no effect at all on your work life. A “D” task is defined as something you can delegate to someone else. The rule is that you should delegate everything that someone else can do so you can free up more time for the A tasks that only you can do. An “E” task is defined as something that you can eliminate altogether, and it won’t make any real difference. This may be a task that was important at one time but is no longer relevant to you or anyone else. Often it is something you continue to do out of habit or because you enjoy it. But every minute that you spend on an E task is time taken away from an A task or activity that can make a real difference in your life. After you have applied the ABCDE Method to your list, you will be completely organized and ready to get more important things done faster.

Make work appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them. Set aside thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-minute time segments that you use to work on and complete important tasks. Many highly productive people schedule specific activities in preplanned time slots all day long. These people build their work lives around accomplishing key tasks one at a time.

The ability to concentrate singlemindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life.

Set the table: Decide exactly what you want. Clarity is essential. Write out your goals and objectives before you begin. Plan every day in advance: Think on paper. Every minute you spend in planning can save you five or ten minutes in execution. Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything: Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top 20 percent. Consider the consequences: Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive or negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all else. Practice creative procrastination: Since you can't do everything, you must learn to deliberately put off those tasks that are of low value so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count. Use the ABCDE Method continually: Before you begin work on a list of tasks, take a few moments to organize them by value and priority so you can be sure of working on your most important activities. Focus on key result areas: Identify and determine those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long. The Law of Three: Identify the three things you do in your work that account for 90 percent of your contribution, and focus on getting them done before anything else. You will then have more time for your family and personal life. Prepare thoroughly before you begin: Have everything you need at hand before you start. Assemble all the papers, information, tools, work materials, and numbers you might require so that you can get started and keep going. Take it one oil barrel at a time: You can accomplish the biggest and most complicated job if you just complete it one step at a time. Upgrade your key skills: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them and the sooner you get them done. Leverage your special talents: Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well. Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or choke points, internal or external, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals, and focus on alleviating them. Put the pressure on yourself: Imagine that you have to leave town for a month, and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left. Maximize your personal power: Identify your periods of highest mental and physical energy each day, and structure your most important and demanding tasks around these times. Get lots of rest so you can perform at your best. Motivate yourself into action: Be your own cheerleader. Look for the good in every situation. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive. Get out of the technological time sinks: Use technology to improve the quality of your communications, but do not allow yourself to become a slave to it. Learn to occasionally turn things off and leave them off. Slice and dice the task: Break large, complex tasks down into bite-sized pieces, and then do just one small part of the task to get started. Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks. Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become known as a person who does things quickly and well. Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task, and then work without stopping until the job is 100 percent complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.

7. Focus on key result areas: Identify those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long.

11. Upgrade your key skills: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them and the sooner you get them done. Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well.

12. Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or choke points, internal or external, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals, and focus on alleviating them.

20. Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become known as a person who does things quickly and well.

21. Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task, and then work without stopping until the job is 100 percent complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.

Communication is at the root of all business strengths—and weaknesses. When things go wrong and employees become upset, whether at a restaurant, a law firm, a hardware store, a university, or a major corporation, nine times out of ten the justifiable complaint is, “We need to communicate more effectively.” I admit that for many years, I didn’t really know what this meant. I had no problem standing up in front of a group to give a talk. I thought I was a pretty good communicator, but then it dawned on me: communicating has as much to do with context as it does content. That’s called setting the table. Understanding who needs to know what, when people need to know it, and why, and then presenting that information in an entirely comprehensible way is a sine qua non of great leadership. Clear, timely communication is the key to applying constant, gentle pressure. To illustrate the point, I teach our managers about the “lily pad” theory. Imagine a pond filled with lily pads and a frog perched serenely atop each one. For the fun of it, a little boy tosses a small pebble into the water, which breaks the surface of the pond but causes just a tiny ripple. The frogs barely notice, and don’t budge. Enjoying himself, the boy next tosses a larger stone into the center of the pond, sending stronger ripples that cause all of the lily pads to rock and tilt. Some frogs jump off their lily pads, while others cling to avoid falling off. But the ripples affect them all. Not content, the boy then hurls a huge rock, which creates a wave that knocks each and every frog into the water. Some frogs are frightened. All are angry (assuming that frogs get angry). If only the frogs had had some warning about the impending rock toss, each one could have timed its jump so that the wave would have had no serious impact. Grasping the lily pad theory and training yourself and your managers to implement it prevents many, if not all, communication problems.

You can use three questions on a regular basis to keep yourself focused on completing your most important tasks on schedule. The first question is, “What are my highest-value activities?” Put another way, what are the biggest frogs that you have to eat to make the greatest contribution to your organization? To your family? To your life in general? This is one of the most important questions you can ever ask and answer. What are your highest-value activities? First, think this through for yourself. Then, ask your boss. Ask your coworkers and subordinates. Ask your friends and family. Like focusing the lens of a camera, you must be crystal clear about your highest-value activities before you begin work. The second question you can ask continually is, “What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?” This question came from the late Peter Drucker, the management guru. It is one of the most important of all questions for achieving personal effectiveness. What can you and only you do that if done well can make a real difference? This is something that only you can do. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done by someone else. But if you do do it, and you do it well, it can really make a difference to your life and your career. What is this particular frog for you? Every hour of every day, you can ask yourself this question and come up with a specific answer. Your job is to be clear about the answer and then to start and work on this task before anything else. The third question you can ask is, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” In other words, “What is my biggest frog of all at this moment?” This is the core question of time management. Answering this question correctly is the key to overcoming procrastination and becoming a highly productive person. Every hour of every day, one task represents the most valuable use of your time at that moment. Your job is to ask yourself this question, over and over again, and to always be working on the answer to it, whatever it is.