Minimal Inspirational Quotes

She remembered who she was and the game changed.

Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It's your masterpiece after all.

My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.

Simplicity is complex. It's never simple to keep things simple. Simple solutions require the most advanced thinking.

Perfectionism is not the same thing has striving to be your best. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. It’s a shield. It’s a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from flight.

Who could justify trading a lifetime of stress and backbreaking labor for better blinds? Is a nicer-looking window treatment really worth so much of your life?

Clearing clutter—be it physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual—brings about ease and inspires a sense of peace, calm, and tranquility.

Sometimes, minimizing possessions means a dream must die. But this is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, it takes giving up the person we wanted to be in order to fully appreciate the person we can actually become.

Sadness, disappointment, and severe challenge are events in life, not life itself. I do not minimize how hard some of these events are. They can extend over a long period of time, but they should not be allowed to become the confining center of everything you do. The Lord inspired Lehi to declare the fundamental truth, “Men are, that they might have joy.” That is a conditional statement: “they might have joy.” It is not conditional for the Lord. His intent is that each of us finds joy. It will not be conditional for you as you obey the commandments, have faith in the Master, and do the things that are necessary to have joy here on earth.

If you cannot afford yourself any luxuries for the time being, at least offer yourself the one priceless luxury no one can take away from you – your time

Einstein’s remark on the limitlessness of human stupidity is made even more disturbing by the discovery that infinity comes in different sizes. Answering ‘How much stupider?’ or trying to measure the minimal idiocy bounded by an IQ test are mysteries which are themselves infinitely less alarming than simply attempting to tally the anti-savant population. One can count all the natural idiots (they’re the same as the even number of idiots – twice as many), but the number of real idiots continues forever: all the counting idiots (finger reckoners) plus all the fractional idiots (geniuses on a bad day) plus all the irrational idiots (they go on and on and on) add up to a world in which the approaching upper limit of our set of natural resources has its complement in the inexhaustible lower limit of our set of mental ones.

Keep the focus on minimal product. More on this later, but your job as product manager is not to define the ultimate product, it’s to define the smallest possible product that will meet your goals.

The bare minimum will get you a bare minimum life. Going above and beyond will launch you above and beyond.

Minimalism means not trying to improve perfection.

The more we gave up, the more we gained.

You can't achieve major goals with minimal work.

If we are to truly evolve and grow, it’s not enough to read about concepts. We must also incorporate them into our lives. Unless they are applied, and unless their worth is verified and validated through personal experience, their influence will be minimal. To really be effective, learning also has to be experiential.

This is the beautiful secret of minimalism: It may seem like it’s about stuff, but once you’ve cut through the clutter and adopted a new frame of mind, you learn that it’s barely about ‘the stuff’ at all.

Our excessive possessions are not making us happy. Even worse, they are taking us away from the things that do. Once we let go of the things that don't matter, we are free to pursue all the things that really do matter.

When you maximize your strengths you minimize your weaknesses.

Reduce what you have. Decrease what you want.

Minimalism is really about reassessment of priorities, so you can remove unnecessary thigns from your life; get rid of things like possessions, activities, and relationships that do not improve or bring value to your life.

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but not know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

He was thinking of the book, and what Dahlia had said about sleepwalking, and a strange thought came to him: had Arthur seen that Clark was sleepwalking? Would this be in the letters to V.? Because he had been sleepwalking, Clark realized, moving half-asleep through the motions of his life for a while now, years; not specifically unhappy, but when had he last found real joy in his work? When was the last time he'd truly been moved by anything? When had he last felt awe or inspiration? He wished he could somehow go back and find the iPhone people whom he'd jostled on the sidewalk earlier, apologize to them--I'm sorry, I've realized that I'm just as minimally present in this world as your are, I had no right to judge--and also he wanted of every 360° report and apologize to them too, because it's an awful thing to appear in someone else's report, he saw that now, it's an awful thing to be a target.

Life is iffy. We never know when it might pull the plug (we don’t know opponent’s strategy), so we should live and enjoy every moment to its fullest (minimize losses. Enjoy this moment—this, this very moment. Live today, as if there’s no tomorrow.

Often removing is improving.

Maximize your faith. Minimize your fears.

With teamwork we are able to multiply our output and minimize individual input.

A new way of life would open for each of us if we redefine our pursuits and appreciate what we already have.

The world needs more people who celebrate the little things in life and find life in every little thing.

Minimalism is a way of living at the maximum of your potential.

When we live minimally, we live more mindfully.

People work hard for two reasons: they are externally inspired, or they are internally motivated. Sometimes it’s a combination of both.

You are one of a kind. You are irreplaceable. A masterpiece, a Mini-Me of the Divine sufficient unto yourself.

I love the smell, the lovely aroma of indulgent lushness, of people with inner peace.

I no longer want to hold on to things that clutter my mind and cripple my soul. Please give me the wisdom and strength to let things go. Let me flow. Let me grow.

We deny, suppress, repress, and minimize our trauma to preserve our self-concept. By doing so, we set ourselves up for repeating the cycle again.

In the end, he settled on posting one picture every week of whatever personal art project he happens to be working on. “It’s a great way for me to have a visual archive of my projects,” he explained. He also follows only a small number of accounts, all of which belong to artists whose work inspires him—making the experience of checking his feed both fast and meaningful.

Sponsor said relationships are fertilizer for character defects. I thought about it, prayed about it, and agreed. I guess it's better to minimize damage, adopt a sane and sound ideal, and buy pussy from now on.

Throughout history, the life of a businessperson always involves some risk; the higher the risk, the greater the reward. On the other hand, the life of an employee in any workforce involves minimal to no risk at all, resulting in a lifetime full of steadiness with little to no accomplishments during this lifetime. However, there is a crucial factor which can also be considered as a trait or characteristic that made many remarkable men and women throughout history reach high levels of their career paths, which is considered to be “success” in our modern world: Audacity.

If Ever You Feel Down, Remember, 100Trillion Cells Make Up Your Body and ALL each of them cares About is You. Our body is made up of about 100,000 Billions of cells (100 Trillion)... all living working and sacrificing themselves completely for the exclusive benefit, well-being, and survival of the whole (which is you). We are each of us a universe unto ourselves. To put 100 Trillion in perspective... Jeremy Harper counted from one to one million in about 3 months. He did NOTHING but count, eat, and sleep (minimal). During this time; he didn't leave his home nor even shave. And that's only one MILLION, so if you ignore the fact that pronunciation takes much, much longer on ever larger numbers (more than a minute each), counting to 100 Trillion would take more than 25 Million years. It's awe inspiring to think that 100 Trillion cells (worlds) are counting ON me also, my decisions determine (to a large degree) whether they are allowed to continue living and experiencing in this life or not. Knowing all of this, who could realistically say that there are no miracles. We each have over 100 Trillion miracles working FOR us and depending ON us each and every second of every day. So when praying, I must always keep in mind that each word is in behalf of 100 Trillion worlds. OUR Father Who Art in Heaven...

It’s not about living in a sleek loft with three pieces of designer furniture. It’s not daring, nor dramatic, nor even all that difficult. What is minimalism then? It’s eliminating the excess. It’s asking “why” before you buy. It’s embracing the concept of enough. It’s living lightly and gracefully on the Earth. It’s uncovering who you are when all of the logos, brand names, and clutter are stripped away. It’s simple, it’s ordinary, and it’s accessible to everyone—from singles to families, teenagers to retirees. I’m reminded of the saying, “Zen is chopping wood and carrying water.” In other words, the world of enlightenment is none other than our everyday world.

forgiveness. It is not in denying the hopeless days that take place when others reject us or turn on us. It is not in minimizing the pain we experience at the hands of those who seem bent on ruining our lives. People turn on people. They betray one another. Crass unkindness, vicious plottings, horrible and intentional antagonisms are shown, and calling it a hopeless day hardly describes the extended season of struggle that many of us face at times. But there is a lesson at Calvary. Forgive everyone—anyone—whom you think has failed you, hurt you, offended you. If you think they’ve done anything to ruin your day, ruin your life, ruin your opportunities, ruin your dreams, or block your goals—forgive them. Forgiving others is the key to living in the liberty of the freeing forgiveness Jesus has given us, and it’s the first step toward finding hope for a hopeless day, not to mention opening the door to new days unimagined.

The biblical writers were human like us, and nothing is gained by thinking otherwise. Someone might say, “Well, okay, sure they were human, obviously, but the biblical writers were also inspired, directed by God in what to write, and so not simply ordinary human writers.” I get the point. To see the Bible as inspired by God is certainly the mainstream view in the history of Christianity (and Judaism), but what that means exactly and how it works out in detail have proved to be quite tough nuts to crack. Answers abound (and conflict) and no one has cracked the code, including me. But any explanation of what it means for God to inspire human beings to write things down would need to account for the diverse (not to mention ancient and ambiguous) Bible we have before us. Any explanation that needs to minimize, cover up, or push these self-evident biblical characteristics aside isn’t really an explanation; it’s propaganda.

The worst kind of person is the type that goes around minimizing the achievements of other people. If anything at all, I want to maximize whatever achievements and admirable qualities another person has. The better you do, or are, the louder I'll cheer for you. I am into wanting eagles to soar further and higher. I'm not a chicken farmer. There are so many chicken farmers. I cannot stand people who cannot stand in the light of another without trying to diminish it.

Who knows what advantages you might find in a smaller home, even beyond what you were initially hoping for, after you move in? Maybe you'll be inspired to become a more creative person when you take up residence in a quaint older neighborhood and get out of that suburban tract where you can have a house of any color as long as it's beige. Maybe by putting your preadolescent kids in a bedroom together, they'll socialize better and develop closer bonds. Maybe you and your spouse will rediscover each other when you're actually spending time together instead of tag-teaming on chores.

ESTABLISHING A DAILY MEDITATION First select a suitable space for your regular meditation. It can be wherever you can sit easily with minimal disturbance: a corner of your bedroom or any other quiet spot in your home. Place a meditation cushion or chair there for your use. Arrange what is around so that you are reminded of your meditative purpose, so that it feels like a sacred and peaceful space. You may wish to make a simple altar with a flower or sacred image, or place your favorite spiritual books there for a few moments of inspiring reading. Let yourself enjoy creating this space for yourself. Then select a regular time for practice that suits your schedule and temperament. If you are a morning person, experiment with a sitting before breakfast. If evening fits your temperament or schedule better, try that first. Begin with sitting ten or twenty minutes at a time. Later you can sit longer or more frequently. Daily meditation can become like bathing or toothbrushing. It can bring a regular cleansing and calming to your heart and mind. Find a posture on the chair or cushion in which you can easily sit erect without being rigid. Let your body be firmly planted on the earth, your hands resting easily, your heart soft, your eyes closed gently. At first feel your body and consciously soften any obvious tension. Let go of any habitual thoughts or plans. Bring your attention to feel the sensations of your breathing. Take a few deep breaths to sense where you can feel the breath most easily, as coolness or tingling in the nostrils or throat, as movement of the chest, or rise and fall of the belly. Then let your breath be natural. Feel the sensations of your natural breathing very carefully, relaxing into each breath as you feel it, noticing how the soft sensations of breathing come and go with the changing breath. After a few breaths your mind will probably wander. When you notice this, no matter how long or short a time you have been away, simply come back to the next breath. Before you return, you can mindfully acknowledge where you have gone with a soft word in the back of your mind, such as “thinking,” “wandering,” “hearing,” “itching.” After softly and silently naming to yourself where your attention has been, gently and directly return to feel the next breath. Later on in your meditation you will be able to work with the places your mind wanders to, but for initial training, one word of acknowledgment and a simple return to the breath is best. As you sit, let the breath change rhythms naturally, allowing it to be short, long, fast, slow, rough, or easy. Calm yourself by relaxing into the breath. When your breath becomes soft, let your attention become gentle and careful, as soft as the breath itself. Like training a puppy, gently bring yourself back a thousand times. Over weeks and months of this practice you will gradually learn to calm and center yourself using the breath. There will be many cycles in this process, stormy days alternating with clear days. Just stay with it. As you do, listening deeply, you will find the breath helping to connect and quiet your whole body and mind. Working with the breath is an excellent foundation for the other meditations presented in this book. After developing some calm and skills, and connecting with your breath, you can then extend your range of meditation to include healing and awareness of all the levels of your body and mind. You will discover how awareness of your breath can serve as a steady basis for all you do.

had Arthur seen that Clark was sleepwalking? Would this be in the letters to V.? Because he had been sleepwalking, Clark realized, moving half-asleep through the motions of his life for a while now, years; not specifically unhappy, but when had he last found real joy in his work? When was the last time he’d been truly moved by anything? When had he last felt awe or inspiration? He wished he could somehow go back and find the iPhone people whom he’d jostled on the sidewalk earlier, apologize to them—I’m sorry, I’ve just realized that I’m as minimally present in this world as you are,

If there is no God then we have no interest in the minimal religion or any other. We will not make a lie even to save civilization. But if there is, then it is so probable as to be almost axiomatic that the initiative lies wholly on His side. If He can be known it will be by self-revelation on His part, not by speculation on ours. We, therefore, look for Him where it is claimed that He has revealed Himself by miracle, by inspired teachers, by enjoined ritual. The traditions conflict, yet the longer and more sympathetically we study them the more we become aware of a common element in many of them: the theme of sacrifice, of mystical communion through the shed blood, of death and rebirth, of redemption, is too clear to escape notice.

No wise liberal has ever thought that liberalism is all of wisdom. The reason liberals like laws is because they give us more time for everything in life that isn’t law-like. When we aren’t fighting every minute for minimal rights, or reasserting our territory, or worrying about the next clan’s claims, we can look at the stars and taste new cheeses and make love, sometimes with the wrong person. The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive. Liberalism isn't a political theory applied to life. It's what we know about life applied to a political theory. That good change happens step by step, stone by stone, and bird by bird, that we advance in life by invisible thoroughfares and, feeling our way along in their darkness, awaken to find ourselves changed and, sometimes, improved.

The shift to Evolutionary-Teal happens when we learn to disidentify from our own ego. By looking at our ego from a distance, we can suddenly see how its fears, ambitions, and desires often run our life. We can learn to minimize our need to control, to look good, to fit in. We are no longer fused with our ego, and we don’t let its fears reflexively control our lives. In the process, we make room to listen to the wisdom of other, deeper parts of ourselves. What replaces fear? A capacity to trust the abundance of life. All wisdom traditions posit the profound truth that there are two fundamental ways to live life: from fear and scarcity or from trust and abundance. In Evolutionary-Teal, we cross the chasm and learn to decrease our need to control people and events. We come to believe that even if something unexpected happens or if we make mistakes, things will turn out all right, and when they don’t, life will have given us an opportunity to learn and grow.

I readily admit that I am not a minimalist. I find solace in the fact that the traditional Japanese minimal aesthetic was made possible by the equally traditional kura (storehouse) where the items not in use or on display in the home would be kept. I like being surrounded by things that inspire me and allow me to start new projects instantly. I know it’s wrong, but I do judge people. An obsession with minimalism has always smacked to me of a romanticism of poverty (and potentially an outdated one at that) from a wealthy perspective. I think of Marie Antoinette having a little farm built on the castle grounds so that she could play at being a peasant shepherdess. Considered minimalism in this day and age is generally a pastime for those with the affluence to buy (or rebuy) what they need, when they need it. The considered minimalist needn’t be as resourceful about keeping things around “just in case,” because, at any moment, he or she can replenish the shelves with abundance.

The legendary inscription above the Academy's door speaks loudly about Plato's attitude toward mathematics. In fact, most of the significant mathematical research of the fourth century BC was carried out by people associated in one way or another with the Academy. Yet Plato himself was not a mathematician of great technical dexterity, and his direct contributions to mathematical knowledge were probably minimal. Rather, he was an enthusiastic spectator, a motivating source of challenge, an intelligent critic, an an inspiring guide. The first century philosopher and historian Philodemus paints a clear picture: "At that time great progress was seen in mathematics, with Plato serving as the general architect setting out problems, and the mathematicians investigating them earnestly." To which the Neoplatonic philosopher and mathematician Proclus adds: "Plato...greatly advanced mathematics in general and geometry in particular because of his zeal for these studies. It is well known that his writings are thickly sprinkled with mathematical terms and that he everywhere tries to arouse admiration for mathematics among students of philosophy." In other words, Plato, whose mathematical knowledge was broadly up to date, could converse with the mathematicians as an equal and as a problem presenter, even though his personal mathematical achievements were not significant.

Even though copying what’s come before is a guaranteed path to mediocrity, it appears to be a safe choice, and the desire to be safe—to succeed with minimal risk—can infect not just individuals but also entire companies.

Imagine you are going on vacation to a fun place where you can relax, eat well and enjoy your hobbies... What would you put in your suitcase? Now, let's imagine you decide to live a permanently fun life where you live... What are you waiting to get rid of what did not fit in your luggage?

Because of the many casualties that had happened in homemade bunkers, we were warned to no longer use them. We were told that the homemade shelter we had laboriously constructed in the basement of our building was useless and now could not even give us the illusion of being a safe haven. Instead a massive new suburban air raid shelter had been built of reinforced concrete, which was eleven feet thick in places. The structure was near the tram stop where the Feudenheimer Strasse became the Haupt Strasse or Main Street. Even with a war going on with lives at stake, Nazi style commercialism was alive and well, as we rented a room in this nearby bunker for six Reichmarks a night. At the time $1 = RM 2.50. The small room had four beds and we were told to be there prior to 18:00 hours or six o’clock in the evening. Concussions from the bombs were of primary concern and everything was designed to minimize their effect. The pathway to the entrance of this bunker was a zigzagged concrete walk protected by sandbags, as this helped to reduce the concussion from an air blast. Tall bushes and grass as well as riverweed, were planted strategically to absorb the bomb bursts from across the river.

Learn to live with less so that you appreciate more.

What is minimalism then? It’s eliminating the excess. It’s asking “why” before you buy. It’s embracing the concept of enough. It’s living lightly and gracefully on the Earth. It’s uncovering who you are when all of the logos, brand names, and clutter are stripped away. It’s simple, it’s ordinary, and it’s accessible to everyone—from singles to families, teenagers to retirees.

Minimalism can help you find contentment and satisfaction and finally put meaning into your life. Just removing unnecessary things that do not bring any value to you will essentially open the door to a brand new perspective on living.

Their rituals minimized the friction in this transition to depth, allowing them to go deep more easily and stay in the state longer. If they had instead waited for inspiration to strike before settling in to serious work, their accomplishments would likely have been greatly reduced.

True to its name (gelato spelled backwards), Oletag is swimming against the tide of cost-cutting convenience that dominates Italy's ice cream industry. Sixty flavors at a given time, rotating daily- most rigorously tied to the season, many inspired by a pantry of savory ingredients: mustard, Gorgonzola with white chocolate and hazelnuts, pecorino with bitter orange. He seeks out local flavors, but never at the expense of a better product: pistachios from Turkey, hazelnuts from Piedmont, and (gasp!) French-born Valrhona chocolate. Extractions, infusions, experiments- whatever it takes to get more out of the handful of ingredients he puts into each creation. In the end, what matters is what ends up in the scoop, and the stuff at Oletag will make your toes curl- creams and chocolates so pure and intense they must be genetically manipulated, fruit-based creations so expressive of the season that they actually taste different from one day to the next. And a licorice gelato that will change you- if not for life, at least for a few weeks. Radicioni and Torcè are far from alone in their quest to lift the gelato genre. Fior di Luna has been doing it right- serious ingredients ethically sourced and minimally processed- since 1993. At Gelateria dei Gracchi, just across the Regina Margherita bridge, Alberto Monassei obsesses over every last detail, from the size of the whole hazelnuts in his decadent gianduia to the provenance of the pears that he combines with ribbons of caramel. And Maria Agnese Spagnuolo, one of Torcè's many disciples, continues to push the limits of gelato at her ever-expanding Fatamorgana empire, where a lineup of more than fifty choices- from basil-honey-walnut to dark chocolate-wasabi- attracts a steady crush of locals and savvy tourists.

Inspired by these meetings, Franklin created a scheme in which the Junto members would contribute funds toward buying books that all members could use. This model soon grew beyond Franklin’s Friday evening gatherings, leading him in 1731 to write the charter for the Library Company of Philadelphia, one of the first subscription libraries in America.

Described in this way, utilitarianism has little in common with the prosaic, visionless notion of the 'merely utilitarian,' in the sense of a narrowly or mundanely functional or efficient option. No such limited horizon confined the thought and character of the great English-language utilitarian philosophers, whose influence ran its course from the period just before the French Revolution through the Victorian era. Happiness, for them, was more of a cosmic calling, the path to world progress, and whatever was deemed 'utilitarian' had to be useful for that larger and inspiring end, the global minimization of pointless suffering and the global maximization of positive well-being or happiness. It invokes, ultimately, the point of view of universal benevolence. And it is more accurately charged with being too demanding ethically than with being too accommodating of narrow practicality, material interests, self-interestedness, and the like.

Having is like the Star of Bethlehem here. It’ll also minimize your fear and anxiety.

We want to know what is behind our fears and our walls. Most often it is the lack of confidence. Confidence is the antithesis of fear. When we develop confidence, we minimize fear. Being sure of me, feeling confident in who I am, where I’ve been and what I have to share has been a long uphill battle.

Leere ist gut. Leere heißt Platz für Neues, Platz zum Durchatmen.

Off and on, for several years, I’d been reading Zen, I’d flirted with Tantric Hinduism, I’d surfed the smaller swells of Sufism, and tried to get down with the Tao. It was all very eye-opening and inspirational, and while Asian mysticism is an easy target for the sneers of secular cynics and sectarian dogmatists alike, it’s far more compatible with modern science than the misinterpreted Levantine myths, ecclesiastical fairy tales, pious platitudes, and near-desperate wishful thinking I’d been fed in Southern Baptist Sunday School. The wisdom in those spiritual texts was obvious, yet I’d integrated it into my daily life with but minimal success. From a practical point of view, it was like trying to teach a monkey to play chess.

Sebanyak dan sehebat apa pun guru menulis, keahlian menulismu berkembang dan meningkat pesat tergantung dirimu sendiri. Pengalaman hidup saya membuktikan, keahlian menulis terbentuk dari disiplin ketat membaca buku minimal 1 jam sehari dan menulis minimal 6 jam sehari, sepanjang tahun. Butuh waktu setidaknya 10 ribu jam berlatih dan berkarya untuk menjadi ahli di bidang apa pun.

Because, let’s face it, checking “likes” is the new smoking.

Before minimizing your home office, clarify in your own mind how you want it to work. Are you running a business out of there? Is it just for processing the household accounts? Do you want it to be inspirational, encouraging creativity and dreaming, or would you rather keep it sparse and utilitarian? Is it a retreat where you like to read a book or sip a drink- more of a den than a mere office? Is it for the whole family or just the parents?

One of the first things that became clear during this exploration is that our culture’s relationship with these tools is complicated by the fact that they mix harm with benefits. Smartphones, ubiquitous wireless internet, digital platforms that connect billions of people—these are triumphant innovations! Few serious commentators think we’d be better off retreating to an earlier technological age. But at the same time, people are tired of feeling like they’ve become a slave to their devices. This reality creates a jumbled emotional landscape where you can simultaneously cherish your ability to discover inspiring photos on Instagram while fretting about this app’s ability to invade the evening hours you used to spend talking with friends or reading.

Choosing what to eat according to the different seasons is a way to listen to the body, to heal it naturally, to strength your immunity, and to minimize the chance of the body becoming imbalanced because of seasonal changes. The key difference between western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine is that western medicine is used to cure diseases, whereas TCM focuses more on preventing sickness from starting.

In July 1969 hundreds of millions of people on Earth huddled around television screens to witness a new world come within reach, a pinnacle of human achievement. When Christopher Columbus or Vasco da Gama set off on their respective voyages to explore new worlds, there were likely no more than a few dozen spectators waving them farewell. But the moon landing was a collective journey, made awe inspiring with live images from outer space transmitted through television, putting much of humanity in a collective trance. It was so momentous that the entire first section of the New York Times was dedicated to the smallest details and broadest implications of this most highly anticipated event of the space age. At the time, people expected the moon to be settled, at the very least in some minimal way, in the not-too-distant future. Optimistic speculations suggested that shuttle services for passengers were just a decade away.

In July 1969 hundreds of millions of people on Earth huddled around television screens to witness a new world come within reach, a pinnacle of human achievement. When Christopher Columbus or Vasco da Gama set off on their respective voyages to explore new worlds, there were likely no more than a few dozen spectators waving them farewell. But the moon landing was a collective journey, made awe inspiring with live images from outer space transmitted through television, putting much of humanity in a collective trance. It was so momentous that the entire first section of the New York Times was dedicated to the smallest details and broadest implications of this most highly anticipated event of the space age. At the time, people expected the moon to be settled, at the very least in some minimal way, in the not-too-distant future. Optimistic speculations suggested that shuttle services for passengers were just a decade away. This

The MVP should be a prototype, not a product. Building an actual product‐quality deliverable to learn, even if that deliverable has minimal functionality, leads to substantial waste of time and money, which of course is the antithesis of Lean. I find that using the more general term prototype makes this critical point clear to the product team, the company, and the prospective customers. So, in this book, I talk about different types of prototypes being used in discovery and products being produced in delivery.

TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES AGO, Amsterdam was the world’s commercial center, but many of its wealthy merchants were reeling from one of the world’s first financial crises. The shares of the British East India Company had collapsed, culminating in a series of bank failures, government bailouts, and ultimately nationalization, a debacle that rippled across the continent’s nascent markets. For a little-known Dutch merchant and stockbroker, it proved the inspiration for an idea ahead of its time. In 1774, Abraham von Ketwich set up a novel, pooled investment trust he called Eendragt Maakt Magt—Dutch for “Unity Creates Strength.” This would sell two thousand shares for five hundred guilders each to individual investors, and invest the proceeds into a diversified portfolio of fifty bonds. These were divided into ten different categories, from plantation loans, bonds backed by Spanish or Danish toll road payments, to an assortment of European government bonds. At the time, bonds were physical certificates written on paper or even goatskin, and these were stored in a solid iron chest with three locks, which could be opened only by Eendragt Maakt Magt’s board and an independent notary. The aim was to pay a 4 percent annual dividend, and disburse the final proceeds only after twenty-five years, hoping that the diversity of the portfolio would protect investors.1 As it turns out, a subsequent Anglo-Dutch war in 1780 and Napoleon’s occupation of Holland in 1795 wreaked havoc on Eendragt Maakt Magt. The annual payments never materialized, and investors didn’t receive their money back until 1824, albeit then receiving 561 guilders a share. Nonetheless, Eendragt Maakt Magt was a brilliant invention that would go on to inspire the birth of investment trusts in Great Britain and eventually the mutual fund we know today. It is also arguably the ultimate intellectual forefather of today’s index funds, given its minimal trading, diversified approach, and low fees, charging a mere 0.2 percent a year.

Future shackled is when tomorrow is anchored, boxed and managed to maximize the minimizing of uncertainty.

Make moves that minimize mistakes and maximize the potential for success

Each religion has provided a tremendous service in defining elements of conscience. They have made it possible for us to live together in a society, to work toward common goals, and to learn how to accept or tolerate relative opposition to our own opinions. I also think that this has been done much as a parent needs to provide a similar service for an adolescent. Internal and external conflict requires discipline to organize and structure some form of minimizing the chaos imposed on others.

There’s a long tradition in many disciplines regarding the breath, so I’m certainly not the first to suggest its importance. Unfortunately, though, having so much tradition, that gives the sense to many that there’s nothing really new there, nothing extraordinary to discover. The traditions themselves in most cases haven’t really evolved and haven’t succeeded in compelling the general public. Everyone knows to “take a deep breath” when stressed, but the immediate impact is minimal at best (actually, a deep breath is not much help; a long, smooth, slow exhale is, however). And the idea of another obligation, studying or relearning how to breathe, lacks inspiration.

Far too much horrific wast of human capacity is disguised as order, predictability, and minimizing uncertainty.

In 2005, when Congress still depended on Communist votes for a majority in Parliament, a National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed, assuring any household in the countryside a hundred days labour a year at the legal minimum wage on public works, with at least a third of these jobs for women. It is work for pay, rather than a direct cash transfer scheme as in Brazil, to minimize the danger of money going to those who are not actually the poor, and so ensure it reaches only those willing to do the work. Denounced by all right-thinking opinion as debilitating charity behind a façade of make-work, it was greeted by the middle-class like ‘a wet dog at a glamorous party’, in the words of one of its architects, the Belgian-Indian economist Jean Drèze. Unlike the Bolsa Família in Brazil, the application of NREGA was left to state governments rather than the centre, so its impact has been very uneven and incomplete, wages often paid lower than the legal minimum, for days many fewer than a hundred.75 Works performed are not always durable, and as with all other social programmes in India, funds are liable to local malversation. But in scale NREGA now represents the largest entitlement programme in the world, reaching some 40 million rural households, a quarter of the total in the country. Over half of these dalit or adivasi, and 48 per cent of its beneficiaries are women – double their share of casual labour in the private sector. Such is the demand for employment by NREGA in the countryside that it far outruns supply. A National Survey Sample for 2009–2010 has revealed that 45 per cent of all rural households wanted the work it offers, of whom only 56 per cent got it.76 What NREGA has started to do, in the formulation Drèze has taken from Ambedkar, is break the dictatorship of the private employer in the countryside, helping by its example to raise wages even of non-recipients. Since inception, its annual cost has risen from $2.5 to over $8 billion, a token of its popularity. This remains less than 1 per cent of GDP, and the great majority of rural labourers in the private sector are still not paid the minimum wage due them. Conceived outside the party system, and accepted by Congress only when it had little expectation of winning the elections of 2004, the Act eventually had such popular demand behind it that the Lok Sabha adopted it nem con. Three years later, with typical dishonesty, the Manmohan regime renamed it as ‘Gandhian’ to fool the masses that Congress inspired it.

Even if you are counted amongst the best, you will slip into mediocrity by remaining comfortable being the worst of the best. You might be relevant, but because your level of effectiveness is in the bottom tier and your impact minimal – you will soon become obscure as your relevance begins to wear off.

Alignment of vision, mission, values and attitudes need to be matched between you and those you choose to surround yourself with. The cost of training or replacing will be very minimal and less painful if recruitment, selection and positioning are done well. This applies even to general employment processes, whether at leadership or staff levels.

Who you choose to surround yourself with will determine if you fail, or if you will succeed. Assets are people who will support you, build you up, and encourage you. Liabilities are people who will tear you down, discourage you, and give you reasons why you can't do whatever it is you want to do. Minimize the liabilities and you'll go far in life.

The twelve management principles of IBM are: Principle #1 - The purpose and mission should be set clearly. Additionally noble and fair objective should be set. Principle #2 – Goals should be specific and when the targets are set, employees should be notified. Principle #3 – Your heart should always be full with strong and persistent passionate desire. Principle #4 – You should be the one who strives for the most. The tasks that you set should be reasonable, and you should work hard on completion. Principle #5 – Costs should be minimized and profit should be maximized. The profit should not be chased but the inflows and the outflows should be controlled. Principle #6 – Top management should be the one to set pricing strategy. They need to find the perfect balance between profitability and happy customers. Principle #7 – The business management requires strong will. Principle #8 - The manager should have corresponding mentality. Principle #9 – Every challenge should be faced with courage. Each challenge should be resolved in fair way. Principle #10 – Creativity should always be present. New stop to innovate and improve, otherwise you will not be able to compete in today’s tough world. Principle #11 – Never forget to be a human. You need to be kind, fair and sincere. Principle #12 – Never lose your hope. Be positive, happy, cheerful and keep your hopes alive. Deciding which way you want your company to go is essential for ensuring success. You can follow IBM’s example, or adapt these principles to fit your situation. I always recommend that you ensure that every employee knows your principles. Employees will feel more confident, secure and motivated if they start working in a company that knows what it wants, where it will be in 10 years, what should be done in order to reach the specific/or set goals, etc. Once you have your principles it is important that you follow them as well. Leading from the front is the best way to inspire those around you.

Even though copying what’s come before is a guaranteed path to mediocrity, it appears to be a safe choice, and the desire to be safe—to succeed with minimal risk—can infect not just individuals but also entire companies. If we sense that our structures are rigid, inflexible, or bureaucratic, we must bust them open—without destroying ourselves in the process.

when we learn to disidentify from our own ego. By looking at our ego from a distance, we can suddenly see how its fears, ambitions, and desires often run our life. We can learn to minimize our need to control, to look good, to fit in. We are no longer fused with our ego, and we don’t let its fears reflexively control our lives.

I agree with Mike totally: A big part of the secret to materializing your visions is learning how to get to the deep place, your soul’s home frequency, where your truest desires abide. Not all those deep desires are lofty, humanitarian, and spiritual in nature. To want to own a house, or have enough healthy food, or an inspiring view, or nice clothes, or a new car — these might be necessary to help you relax and feel good about yourself so you can more easily access your true desires. When the debilitating distractions and stressors are minimized, you become more transparent, and your deep desires fall through the clarity into your conscious mind.

Laughing with blood relatives amidst memorable melodies in the background, styrofoam plate in hand, topped with foods that restaurants can’t duplicate, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Staring at an unbelievable sunrise from a balcony villa in Tanzania, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Recognized and awarded for notable news journalism, a few semesters away from achieving a prestigious degree decorated with promised opportunities, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Hoping quietly for the best, to “win my husband over” with traditional submission, more frequent sex, and minimized speech, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Walking down a dusty Egyptian street filled with the welcoming laughter of carefree children, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Sitting in a church pew notating another good message, clapping to some of my favorite songs, and then exiting to talk with familiar faces, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Communing with those who know who the “real chosen” are, beholding their unknown names unmasked, and secret knowledges revealed to ponder incessantly, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Placed underneath the wanting body of a rare man who showed me unprecedented love, it hit me: I don’t belong here. My soul. My mind. My body. Each malnourished. My community. My life purpose. Both misplaced. All starving for home. So, I moved. Not to what looks and feels good for them, but to what

Love Peoples, Use Things" - The Minimalist

Whether this courage was innate or whether their parents conditioned them to have resolve, knowing that there were other women in the world also pursing science and math perhaps inspired them with perseverance. This sisterly inspiration, though minimal and new to the world, was a powerful movement. Even though their diligence may have wavered for thousands of years, like the women who persisted, they never gave up.

I’ve learned to minimize regrets, for the untried often seems wise until tested

the simple likelihood of drawing a connection between a dream and a waking experience dwindles with temporal distance from the dream. At this point, it is hard to say if there is any kind of probability curve defining some temporal sweet spot when you are likeliest to identify a waking experience relating to a prior dream. This is one of the many, many open questions that we need armies of precognitive dreamworkers with fat dream journals to help figure out. While the bulk of my precognitive hits occur within about three days of a dream, it is not uncommon to find hits up to a couple weeks after a dream, as well as at yearly intervals (we will discuss calendrical resonances in more detail later). Dunne recommended returning to your dreams up to two days afterward and thereafter discarding dream records. He lived before word processors, and since no one would have the time to check all their dreams on an indefinite daily basis, he felt you had to set limits to make your search most effective. In our day of computer files, it is easy to keep permanent, detailed dream records—they no longer take up space—as well as to search them electronically and potentially perform other kinds of analyses if you are really hardcore. But it remains the case that nobody has the time to compare their entire dream journal, which may grow a bit each day, to their entire life, every day. You can see how that could begin to consume one’s life! You have to make compromises. Revisiting your dream records from the previous three days for a minute or two each evening is minimally sufficient. EMINENT COMPANY In taking the J. W. Dunne challenge, you will be in some brilliant and eminent company. Some of the most influential writers of the mid-twentieth century, including T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien, were powerfully inspired by Dunne’s book, and some undertook his experiment. Most fans of Tolkien’s fantasy epics The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings don’t realize that the timeless worldview of his Elven races was based largely on the serial-universe cosmology developed by Dunne on the basis of his dream experiences.4 So far, no dream diary has emerged among Tolkien’s papers that would prove he carried out Dunne’s experiment systematically, but his friend C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, probably did. Lewis hints as much in a posthumously published novel called The Dark Tower, which is partly devoted to Dunne’s ideas.

If I have dealt at some length with this single side of Wesley's character-I mean his preoccupation with strange psychological disturbances, now commonly minimized-it is because I think he, and the other prophets of the Evangelical movement, have succeeded in imposing upon English Christianity a pattern of their own. They have succeeded in identifying religion with a real or supposed experience. I say 'real or supposed', because in the nature of things you cannot prove the validity of any trance, vision, or ecstasy; it remains something within the mind. Still less can you prove the validity of a lifelong Christ-inspired attitude; in the last resort, all it proves is that certain psychological influences are strong enough to overcome, in a given case, all the temptations towards backsliding which a cynical world affords. But, for better or worse, the England which weathered the excitements and disappointments of the early nineteenth century was committed to a religion of experience; you did not base your hopes on this or that doctrinal calculation; you knew. For that reason the average Englishman was, and is, singularly unaffected by reasonings which would attempt to rob him of his theological certainties, whatever they may be. For that reason, also, he expects much (perhaps too much) of his religion in the way of verified results; he is easily disappointed if it does not run according to schedule. It must chime in with his moods, rise superior to his temptations; a decent average of special providences must convince him that it works. Otherwise, though without rancour, he abandons the practice of it. He is not prepared for that unrewarded adventure of naked faith which is, for the Quietist, the common lot of Christians. Not on the scale, but in the spirit, of those eighteenth-century pioneers, he demands 'heart-work'. And, in days when we are apparently less moved by the crowd-appeal, it is hard to come by.

§417. The purpose of science is to be turned into technology, and the purpose of technology is to be used in the construction of the Overman. Any purpose other than this is false, at worst a challenge to our culture (since the Overman IS culture: its last and highest achievement), at best a mere misunderstanding. As for "pure science", this is as much of an absurdity as pure spirit: things we can't influence we have no interest in. And it is only because we can influence everything (because flux: either we can influence everything or nothing, since in a universe of flux changing one thing changes everything) that we are interested in everything. So if we help African children, it is only with a view to turning them into scientists and engineers to help construct the Overman. If we support the arts, we do so to inspire the Overman and help him to relax, or to use failed artists as waiters to serve the Overman his meals. Or McDonalds: to feed the subhumans who clean the toilets in the labs where the scientists and engineers are working on the Overman. Everything can be reduced to this. Every other conception of purpose is folly. Everything going the opposite way, e.g. environmentalism, artfaggotry, religions other than Overman worship, and so on, are threats to be suppressed, or better yet to be reinterpreted as opportunities for the Overman to challenge himself and exercise his powers. Only as intellectual exercises for the Overman are all these forms of decay justified, but once their workings have been fully grasped, as they will be by the time the present work is over, they are nothing but nuisances that serve no useful purpose and must be minimized or, if possible, completely eliminated.

Almost any positive good [positive liberty] can be described in terms of freedom from something [negative liberty]. Health is freedom from disease; happiness is a life free from flaws and miseries; equality is freedom from advantage and disadvantage.. Faced with this flexibility, the theorist will need to prioritize some freedoms and discount others. At its extreme we may get the view that only some particular kind of life makes for ‘real freedom’. Real freedom might, for instance, be freedom the bondage of desire, as in Buddhism and Stoicism. Or it might be a kind of self-realization or self-perfection only possible in a community of similarly self-realized individuals, pointing us towards a communitarian, socialist, or even communist ideal. To a laissez-faire capitalist, it is freedom from more than minimal necessary political and legal interference in the pursuit of profit. But the rhetoric of freedom will typically just disguise the merits or demerits of the political order being promoted. The flexibility of the term ‘freedom’ undoubtedly plays a huge role in the rhetoric of political demands, particularly when the language of rights mingles with the language of freedom. ‘We have a right to freedom from…’ is not only a good way, but the best way to start a moral or political demand. Freedom is a dangerous word, just because it is an inspirational one. The modern emphasis on freedom is problematically associated with a particular self-image. This is the 'autonomous' or self-governing and self-driven individual. This individual has the right to make his or her own decisions. Interference or restraint is lack of respect, and everyone has a right to respect. For this individual, the ultimate irrationality would be to alienate his freedom, for instance by joining a monastery that requires unquestioning obedience to a superior, or selling himself into slavery to another. The self-image may be sustained by the thought that each individual has the same share of human reason, and an equal right to deploy this reason in the conduct of his or her own life. Yet the 'autonomous' individual, gloriously independent in his decision-making, can easily seem to be a fantasy. Not only the Grand Unifying Pessimisms, but any moderately sober reflection on human life and human societies, suggest that we are creatures easily swayed, constantly infected by the opinions of others, lacking critical self-understanding, easily gripped by fantastical hopes and ambitions. Our capacity for self-government is spasmodic, and even while we preen ourselves on our critical and independent, free and rational decisions, we are slaves of fashion and opinion and social and cultural forces of which we are ignorant. A little awareness of ethics will make us mistrustful of sound-bite-sized absolutes. Even sacred freedoms meet compromises, and take us into a world of balances. Free speech is sacred. Yet the law does not protect fraudulent speech, libellous speech, speech describing national secrets, speech inciting racial and other hatreds, speech inciting panic in crowded places, and so on. In return, though, we gain freedom from fraud, from misrepresentation of our characters and our doings, from enemy incursions, from civil unrest, from arbitrary risks of panic in crowds. For sure, there will always be difficult cases. There are websites giving people simple recipes on how to make bombs in their kitchens. Do we want a conception of free speech that protects those? What about the freedom of the rest of us to live our lives without a significant risk of being blown up by a crank? It would be nice if there were a utilitarian calculus enabling us to measure the costs and benefits of permission and suppression, but it is hard to find one.

Selflessness and bravery aren't all that different. The selfless has nothing else to lose. Living is a whole lot easier. Fears are minimized and it is praised as bravery.

We spend ten hours a day to earn comfort for six hours.

It also means we try to minimize dependencies between teams. Notice that I said “minimize” and not “eliminate.” At scale, it's just not possible to eliminate all dependencies, but we can work hard to continuously minimize them.