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And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!
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Dr. Seuss
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remember that trying is eighty percent of doing something. So try and don't give up, because not giving up is the other twenty percent.
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Zain Hashmi (A Blessed Olive Tree: A Spiritual Journey in Twenty Short Stories)
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I've always been like that; I give 100 percent. I can't do it any other way.
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Emma Watson
“
Two percent who care deeply about something are a more potent political force than the 98 percent who feel the opposite but aren't motivated enough to do anything about it.
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Charles Wheelan (Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated))
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Studies show that even a brief connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation. For example, being told that you share a birthday with a mathematician can improve the amount of effort you’re willing to put into difficult math tasks by 62 percent.
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Daniel Coyle (The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills)
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More than my questions about the efficacy of social actions were my questions about my own motives. Do i want social justice for the oppressed or do i jusy want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I dont have to watch the evening news to see the world is bad, i only have to look at myself. I am not brow beating here, i am only saying that true charge , true living giving, God honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem i had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I am the problem
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Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)
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There’s also the truth that 70 percent of serial killer victims are female. You better believe that knowing you’re prey heightens your interest in the predator. You find yourself desperate to make sense of largely random acts of serial murder, believing that if you can understand motivation and hunting patterns, you can protect yourself.
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Jess Lourey (The Quarry Girls)
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Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I know. It's apathy.
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David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1))
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in 2018, 60 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States were perpetrated against Jews (by contrast 18.6 percent targeted Muslims).
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David Baddiel (Jews Don't Count)
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The Yogic system does not talk about God. It does not talk about the soul or heaven. Such talk invariably makes people hallucinatory. Yoga talks only about the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to. The creator is not looking for your attention. The ropes that bind you and the walls that block you- these are one hundred percent of your making. And these are all you need to unknot and dismantle. You have no work with existence. You only have work with the existence that you created.
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Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy)
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That's not a particularly useful measure of your enemies, motive. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that harm done with explicit conscious intention of doing another person harm accounts for about two percent of all harm inflicted. That descriptor pretty much only applies to dictators in banana republics, serial killers, and PE teachers.
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Mhairi McFarlane (Just Last Night)
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According to a recent poll, 36 percent of British Muslims (ages sixteen to twenty-four) think apostates should be put to death for their unbelief.60 Are these people “morally motivated,” in Haidt’s sense, or just morally confused? And
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Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values)
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I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what it was I’d seen. I’ve learned to doubt myself and my perceptions of the world around me. I do realize I’m different, you know, different from most. What I perceive isn’t what you perceive. Plus, people don’t always listen to me. I’m often afraid I won’t be believed, that my thoughts will be discounted. I’m just a maid, a nobody. And what I saw in that moment, it felt like a dream, but I know now that it was real. Someone with a deep motive killed Mr. Black. And that wasn’t me,” I said. I looked at Rodney then, and he looked at me. There was a look on his face that was entirely new. It was as though, for the very first time, he was seeing me for who I really am.
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Nita Prose (The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1))
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But in dozens and dozens of studies, Latham and Locke found that setting goals increased performance and productivity 11 to 25 percent.5 That’s quite a boost. If an eight-hour day is our baseline, that’s like getting two extra hours of work simply by building a mental frame (aka a goal) around the activity. But not every goal is the same. “We found that if you want the largest increase in motivation and productivity,” says Latham, “then big goals lead to the best outcomes. Big goals significantly outperform small goals, medium-sized goals, and vague goals. It comes down to attention and persistence—which are two of the most important factors in determining performance. Big goals help focus attention, and they make us more persistent. The result is we’re much more effective when we work, and much more willing to get up and try again when we fail.
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Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
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Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that “While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages.” Liberals — even upper-income liberals — are a third less likely to say this.
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Arthur C. Brooks
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Criminals are motivated by self-preservation, and handguns can therefore be a deterrent. The potential defensive nature of guns is further evidenced by the different rates of so-called “hot burglaries,” where a resident is at home when a criminal strikes.16 In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries are “hot burglaries.” In contrast, the United States, with fewer restrictions, has a “hot burglary” rate of only 13 percent.
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John R. Lott Jr. (More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws)
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This realization is much like Donald Miller's awakening after a day of protesting President Bush: "More than my questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself.... I was the very problem that I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!" "
I cannot plead innocent. I have contributed to the sum total of misery in the world. ...Or, as Casey incisively remarks, "I have more evidence of crime against myself than I have for any other human being. My conscience accuses me directly of so much malice, whereas I know only by hearsay of the evil done by others. To be humble before God is to know that I am blameworthy." "
Such Christian humility is not the same thing as low self-esteem or poor self-image. It is simply the refusal to be deluded by the lie that I am guiltless: "Empowered by the intensity of God's unconditional love for me, I find it possible to demolish my defenses and admit to the truth of my condition. There is nothing in my constitution or personal history that would give me any confidence in my own competence to bring my life to a happy conclusion.
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Dennis Okholm
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If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough.
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Alan Kay
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If there’s a 1 percent chance that something will happen, then have hope. Expect as much as you can, and it will happen.
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Akhin Abraham
“
A University of Exeter study showed that people who have control over their workspace design are happier at work, more motivated, healthier, and up to 32 percent more productive.
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Gretchen Rubin (Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life)
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The percentage of people qualifying for federal disability benefits because they are unable to work rose from 0.7 percent of the size of the labor force in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010.
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Charles Murray (Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010)
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The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70 percent comes from heuristic work.9
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Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
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Paul J. Meyer, founder of the Success Motivation Institute, says, “Ninety percent of those who fail are not actually defeated. They simply quit.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Motivated employees are 87 percent less likely to leave an organization compared to an unmotivated employee.” —BILL HYBELS
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John C. Maxwell (Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently)
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When Provine studied 1,200 episodes of laughter overheard in public settings, his biggest surprise was finding that speakers laugh more than listeners—about 50 percent more, in fact.
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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It is generally believed that nearly 40 percent of your first impression will be set from the tone of your voice. Your vocal thermometer can be more impactful than the actual words you use.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))
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Adventure should be 80 percent 'I think this is manageable,' but it's good to have that last 20 percent where you're right outside your comfort zone. Still safe, but outside your comfort zone.
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Bear Grylls
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Beginning in early adulthood, dopamine levels, which affect both physical movement and reward-motivated behavior (in addition to a bunch of other things), decline by about 10 percent every decade.
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Rahul Jandial (Life Lessons From A Brain Surgeon: Practical Strategies for Peak Health and Performance)
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Civil War armies were the most literate in history to that time. More than 90 percent of white Union soldiers and more than 80 percent of Confederate soldiers were literate, and most of them wrote frequent letters to families and friends... I am convinced that [their letters and diaries] bring us closer to the real thoughts and emotions of those men than any other kind of surviving evidence.
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James M. McPherson (For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War)
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Jim Rohn quote: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”4 Don’t believe me? Let me drop some science. Dr. David McClelland, renowned social psychologist, Harvard professor, and author, studied human motivation for more than thirty years. As discussed in chapter 3, he found that “95 percent of your success or failure in life is determined by the people with whom you habitually associate.” Ninety-five percent, my friend.
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Rachel Rodgers (We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power)
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Being 100 percent in the moment and focusing on the person you’re with is one of the finest compliments you can offer. One of the most respectful and considerate things you can do for another is to truly be with them in the here and now.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
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Male sexual jealousy is the leading cause of the murder of adult women, accounting for between 50 and 70 percent of all such homicides.8 Police know this. When women are murdered, the prime suspects are boyfriends, husbands, ex-boyfriends, and ex-husbands. Although jealousy sometimes motivates women to murder, only 3 percent of murdered men are killed by their romantic partners or exes, and many of these female-perpetrated homicides are women defending themselves against a jealously violent man.
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David M. Buss (When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault)
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Um um um um um. This business of—this business about marketing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless we’re allowed to think that that’s—that that’s it. That that’s the point, that that’s the goal, you know? And that’s the reason we’re here—because that’s so empty. And you as a writer know that it’s—if you as a writer think that your job is to get as many people to like your stuff and think well of you as possible … And I could, we could both, name writers that it’s pretty obvious that’s their motivation? It kills the work. Each time. That that’s maybe 50 percent of it, but it misses all the magic. And it misses, it doesn’t let you be afraid. Or it doesn’t, like, let you like make yourself be, be vulnerable. Or … nah, see, I’m not … Anyway, anyway.
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David Foster Wallace
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works. Individual students can expect their incomes to rise roughly 8 to 12 percent for each additional year of school they complete. Nations, however, can expect their incomes to rise by only 1 to 3 percent for each additional year of school completed by their citizens on average.13 If schooling actually works by improving individual students, then we would expect the improvements for individual students to be cumulative across a nation. But nations don’t seem to benefit as much from educating their citizens. Something, as they say, doesn’t add up.
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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For example, when articles previously published in a journal were resubmitted soon afterward with new obscure names and institutions, only 10 percent of them were noticed as having been published before, and of the remaining 90 percent, only 10 percent were accepted under the new names.46
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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His daughter is quoted by him as fighting for what Merry too—in her dinner-table outbursts decrying her selfish mother and father and their bourgeois life—proclaimed as the motive for her own struggle: “To change the system and give power to the 90 percent of the people who have no economic or political control now.
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Philip Roth (American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1))
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When some bigoted white people heard the message of Donald Trump and others in the GOP that their concerns mattered, that the fear generated by their own biases had a target in Mexican and Muslim immigrants, many embraced the GOP to their own detriment. We talk at length about the 53 percent of white women who supported the Republican candidate for president, but we tend to skim past the reality that many white voters had been overtly or passively supporting the same problematic candidates and policies for decades. Researchers point to anger and disappointment among some whites as a result of crises like rising death rates from suicide, drugs, and alcohol; the decline in available jobs for those who lack a college degree; and the ongoing myth that white people are unfairly treated by policies designed to level the playing field for other groups—policies like affirmative action. Other studies have pointed to the appeal of authoritarianism, or plain old racism and sexism. Political scientist Diana Mutz said in an interview in Pacific Standard magazine that some voters who switched parties to vote for Trump were motivated by the possibility of a fall in social status: “In short, they feared that they were in the process of losing their previously privileged positions.
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Mikki Kendall (Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot)
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This shift in culture has changed us. In the first place, it has made us a bit more materialistic. College students now say they put more value on money and career success. Every year, researchers from UCLA survey a nationwide sample of college freshmen to gauge their values and what they want out of life. In 1966, 80 percent of freshmen said that they were strongly motivated to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. Today, less than half of them say that. In 1966, 42 percent said that becoming rich was an important life goal. By 1990, 74 percent agreed with that statement. Financial security, once seen as a middling value, is now tied as students’ top goal. In 1966, in other words, students felt it was important to at least present themselves as philosophical and meaning-driven people. By 1990, they no longer felt the need to present themselves that way. They felt it perfectly acceptable to say they were primarily interested in money.20 We live in a more individualistic society. If
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David Brooks (The Road to Character)
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I'm sure that a huge proportion of the situation you are facing, is out out of your control. There's nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can't be 100 percent. There's got to be some proportion--let's say it's even just 2 percent--that is within your control. You can work on that. Who knows what a difference that may make!
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Richard Nelson Bolles (What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers)
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To make matters even more complicated, research has shown that we remember only 25-50 percent of what we hear. This inclination not only compromises our connection with another person, but we can fail to retain vital information. All this evidence demonstrates that it is imperative that we intentionally pay closer attention and strive to become an in-depth listener.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))
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One of the most telling statistics regarding multiples is that 97 percent of them have had a history of severe childhood trauma, often in the form of monstrous psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. This has led many researchers to conclude that becoming a multiple is the psyche's way of coping with extraordinary and soul-crushing pain. By dividing up into one or more personalities the psyche is able to parcel out the pain, in a way, and have several personalities bear what would be too much for just one personality to withstand. In this sense becoming a multiple may be the ultimate example of what Bohm means by fragmentation. It is interesting to note that when the psyche fragments itself, it does not become a collection of broken and jagged-edged shards, but a collection of smaller wholes, complete and self-sustaining with their own traits, motives, and desires. Although these wholes are not identical copies of the original personality, they are related to the dynamics of the original personality, and this in itself suggests that some kind of holographic process is involved.
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Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe)
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motivation for not eating meat and dairy is to maintain optimal health, not to rid myself of the obsession and compulsion that are the hallmark of addiction. If obsession and compulsion are the issue—smoking cigarettes, not being able to stop texting your toxic ex, self-harm—and you want to get past it, you need a Bright Line. If health is your objective, there is no evidence that perfect is better than “really good.” Seriously. You can comply with a health goal 95 percent of the time, and it will benefit you as much as 100 percent perfection.
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Susan Peirce Thompson (Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free)
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The capitalist-investor class experiences a tremendous loss of “real” wealth during depressions because the value of their investment portfolios collapses (declines in equity prices are typically around 50 percent), their earned incomes fall, and they typically face higher tax rates. As a result, they become extremely defensive. Quite often, they are motivated to move their money out of the country (which contributes to currency weakness), dodge taxes, and seek safety in liquid, noncredit-dependent investments (e.g., low-risk government bonds, gold, or cash).
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Ray Dalio (A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises)
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great. This is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the “instant” success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide. Most businesses require a complex network of relationships to function, and these relationships take time to build. In many instances you have to be around for a few years to receive consistent recognition. It takes time to develop connections with investors, suppliers, and vendors. And it takes time for staff and founders to gain effectiveness in their roles and become a strong team.* So, yes, the bar is high when you want to start a company. You’ll have the chance to work on something you own and care about from day to day. You’ll be 100 percent engaged and motivated, and doing something you believe in. You can lead an integrated life, as opposed to a compartmentalized one in which you play a role in an office and then try to forget about it when you get home. You can define an organization, not the other way around. But even if you quit your job, hunker down for years, work hard for uncertain reward, and ask everyone you know for help, there’s still a great chance that your new business will not succeed. Over 50 percent of companies fail within their first three years.2 There’s a quote I like from an unknown source: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.
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Andrew Yang (Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America)
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That is, “Yes” is nothing without “How.” Asking “How,” knowing “How,” and defining “How” are all part of the effective negotiator’s arsenal. He would be unarmed without them. ■ Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands. ■ Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves. ■ Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are. ■ Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal. ■ Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction. ■ A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open. ■ Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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The Endowed Progress Effect Punch cards are often used by retailers to encourage repeat business. With each purchase, customers get closer to receiving a free product or service. These cards are typically awarded empty and in effect, customers start at zero percent complete. What would happen if retailers handed customers punch cards with punches already given? Would people be more likely to take action if they had already made some progress? An experiment sought to answer this very question.[lxvi] Two groups of customers were given punch cards awarding a free car wash once the cards were fully punched. One group was given a blank punch card with 8 squares and the other given a punch card with 10 squares but with two free punches. Both groups still had to purchase 8 car washes to receive a free wash; however, the second group of customers — those that were given two free punches — had a staggering 82 percent higher completion rate. The study demonstrates the endowed progress effect, a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal. Sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook utilize this heuristic to encourage people to divulge more information about themselves when completing their online profiles. On LinkedIn, every user starts with some semblance of progress (figure 19). The next step is to “Improve Your Profile Strength” by supplying additional information.
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Nir Eyal (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products)
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...The same folks who believe this fantasy also believe that the sole motivation for modern man's practice of science is to disprove their beliefs. How despicably arrogant of them to circumvent their burden of proof! It is plainly there for all to see that science wishes to discover and prove the answers to the very same questions that religion claims to already have answers for, whether or not they disprove former assumptions by our ancestors. The religionists should be happy that that their claims might have the chance to be proven wrong, but instead they would rather fear them disproven. I don't know about you, but I smell a guilty conscience. If they were one-hundred percent certain that their claims were of truth, they wouldn't need "faith" in them, nor would they have to dread possible invalidation.
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John M. Penkal
“
A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity. Scientists have tried to quantify this feeling. They found that to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 percent beyond your current ability. In real life it’s typically not feasible to quantify the difficulty of an action in this way, but the core idea of the Goldilocks Rule remains: working on challenges of just manageable difficulty—something on the perimeter of your ability—seems crucial for maintaining motivation. Improvement requires a delicate balance. You need to regularly search for challenges that push you to your edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated. Behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying. Without variety, we get bored. And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
Nearly a century ago, French engineer Max Ringelmann (reported by Kravitz & Martin, 1986) found that the collective effort of tug-of-war teams was but half the sum of the individual efforts. Contrary to the presumption that “in unity there is strength,” this suggested that group members may actually be less motivated when performing additive tasks. Maybe, though, poor performance stemmed from poor coordination—people pulling a rope in slightly different directions at slightly different times. A group of Massachusetts researchers led by Alan Ingham (1974) cleverly eliminated that problem by making individuals think others were pulling with them, when in fact they were pulling alone. Blindfolded participants were assigned the first position in the apparatus and told,
“Pull as hard as you can.” They pulled 18 percent harder when they knew they
were pulling alone than when they believed that behind them two to five people
were also pulling.
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David G. Myers (Social Psychology)
“
Roughly 25 percent of humanity is Muslim. For every Jew, there are roughly one hundred twenty-five Muslims. Judaism is about 2500 years older than Islam, and yet it has not been able to attract nearly as many followers. If we construe religions as memeplexes (a collection of interconnected memes), to borrow Richard Dawkin's term, the Islamic memeplex has been extraordinarily more successful than its Jewish counterpart (from an epidemiological perspective, that is). Why is that? To answer this important question, we must look at the contents of the two respective memeplexes to examine why one is more "infectious" than the other. Let us explore the rules for converting into the two religions and apostatizing out of them. In Judaism, the religious process for conversion is onerous, requiring several years of commitment and an absence of ulterior motive. (For example, converting to Judaism because you are marrying a Jewish person is considered an ulterior motive). Not surprisingly, given the barriers to entry, relatively few people convert to Judaism. On the other hand, to convert to Islam simply requires that one proclaim openly the sentence, the shahada (the testimony): "There is no true god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." It does not require a sophisticated epidemiological model to predict which memeplex will spread more rapidly. Let us now suppose that one wishes to leave the religion. While the Old Testament does mention the death penalty for apostasy, it has seldom been applied throughout Jewish history, whereas to this day apostasy from Islam does lead to the death penalty in several Islamic countries. But perhaps the most important difference is that Judaism does not promote or encourage proselytizing, whereas it is a central religious obligation in Islam. According to Islam, the world is divided into dar al-hard (the house of war) and dar al-Islam (the house of Islam). Peace will arrive when the entire world is united under the flag of Allah. Hence, it is imperative to Islamize the nations within dar al-harb. There is only one Jewish country in the world, Israel, and it has a sizeable non-Jewish minority. But there are fifty-seven member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
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Gad Saad (Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense)
“
Bollywood's economic workings are more mysterious. It still exists in what was known as the informal and high-risk sector of the Indian economy. Banks rarely invest in Bollywood, where moneylenders are rampant, demanding up to 35 percent interest. The big corporate houses seem no less keen to stay away from filmmaking. A senior executive with the Tatas, one of India's prominent business families, told me, "We went into Bollywood, made one film, lost a lot of money, and got out of it fast," adding that "the place works in ways we couldn't begin to explain to our shareholders."
Since only six or seven of the two hundred films made each year earn a profit, the industry has generated little capital of its own. The great studios of the early years of the industry are now defunct. It is outsiders- regular moneylenders, small and big businessmen, real estate people, and, sometimes, mafia dons- who continue to finance new films, and their turnover, given the losses, is rapid. Their motives are mixed: sex, glamour, money laundering, and, more optimistically, profit. They rarely have much to do with the desire to make original, or even competent, films.
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Pankaj Mishra (Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond)
“
Interestingly, married women in their early thirties are most likely to have an affair, perhaps reflecting a motivation to switch mates while their desirability is high and they are still fertile. Additional lines of evidence support the notion that infidelity serves a mate-switching function. First, women who initiate affairs are much more likely to suffer from marital dissatisfaction than women who do not. This might seem blindingly obvious, but the same studies show that men who have affairs do not, in fact, differ from those who abstain from affairs in their levels of marital happiness. Second, women are much more likely than men to become emotionally involved with, and to fall in love with, their affair partners. Roughly 79 percent of women report doing so, in contrast to only 30 percent of men.9 Moreover, women are more likely to cite emotional involvement as a reason for the affair. Men are more likely to cite pure sexual pleasure. These critical sex differences point to dramatically different functional reasons for male and female infidelity. For women especially, they point to the mate-switching function; for men, the desire for sexual variety.
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David M. Buss (When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault)
“
It does something to you when you are running close to what you perceive as our limit (back then, I still topped at 40 percent) and there is someone else out there who makes the difficult look effortless. It was obvious that his preparedness was several levels above our own. Captain Connolly did not show up to simply get through the program and graduate so he could collect some wings for his uniform and belong to the unspoken fraternity of supposed badasses at Fort Campbell. He came to explore what he was made of and grow. That required a willingness to set a new standard wherever possible and make a statement, not necessarily to our dumb asses, but to himself. He was respectful to all the instructors and the school, but he was not there to be led...
Most people love standards. It gives the brain something to focus on, which helps us reach a place of achievement. Organizational structure and atta' boys from our instructors or bosses keep us motivated to perform and to move up on that bell curve. Captain Connolly did not require external motivation. He trained to his own standard and used the existing structure for his own purposes. Air Assault School became his own personal octagon, where he could test himself on a level even the instructors hadn't imagined.
For the next nine days, he put his head down and quietly went about the business of smashing every single standard at Air Assault School. He saw the bar that the instructors pointed to and the rest of us were trying to tap as a hurdle to leap over, and he did it time and again. He understood that his rank only meant something if he sought out a different certification: an invisible badge that says, "I am the example. Follow me, motherfuckers, and I will show you that there is more to this life than so-called authority and stripes or candy on a uniform. I'll show you what true ambition looks like beyond all the external structure in a place of limitless mental growth."
He didn't say any of that. He didn't run his mouth at all. I can't recall him uttering word one in ten fucking days, but through his performance and extreme dedication, he dropped breadcrumbs for anybody who was awake and aware enough to follow him. He flashed his tool kit. He showed us what potent, silent, exemplary leadership looked like. He checked into every Gold Group run, which was led by the fastest instructor in that school, and volunteered to be the first to carry the flag. p237
”
”
David Goggins (Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within)
“
As Frances had learned to do in times of uncertainty, she created a project over which she had total control and began writing a book “Dedicated to the memory of Irving Thalberg as a tribute to his vision and genius.” How to Write and Sell Film Stories was written for “serious students of film technique.” She filled the straightforward textbook with anecdotes from her films and others’ to convey the lessons on the development of plot, motivation, and characters she had learned with Thalberg. She had come to believe that because of increased censorship and the limited number of adaptable plays and novels, “eighty percent of the motion pictures produced will be soon be stories written exclusively for the screen” and the time was right for a book on original screenplays. The audience for the book was immediate; universities ordered copies before it was published and it quickly went into several printings. The book led to her taking on an advice column on screen writing for Cinema Progress, a serious educational film magazine published by the American Institute of Cinematography based at the University of Southern California. She opened her house to roundtable discussions with students and sponsored a scenario contest with the winners serving as studio “apprentices.
”
”
Cari Beauchamp (Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood)
“
Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands. ■Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves. ■Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are. ■Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal. ■Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction. ■A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open. ■Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.
”
”
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
“
Robert Rosenthal found a way. He approached a California public elementary school and offered to test the school’s students with a newly developed intelligence-identification tool, called the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition, which could accurately predict which children would excel academically in the coming year. The school naturally agreed, and the test was administered to the entire student body. A few weeks later, teachers were provided with the names of the children (about 20 percent of the student body) who had tested as high-potentials. These particular children, the teachers were informed, were special. Though they might not have performed well in the past, the test indicated that they possessed “unusual potential for intellectual growth.” (The students were not informed of the test results.) The following year Rosenthal returned to measure how the high-potential students had performed. Exactly as the test had predicted, the first- and second-grade high-potentials had succeeded to a remarkable degree: The first-graders gained 27 IQ points (versus 12 points for the rest of the class); and the second-graders gained 17 points (versus 7 points). In addition, the high-potentials thrived in ways that went beyond measurement. They were described by their teachers as being more curious, happier, better adjusted, and more likely to experience success as adults. What’s more, the teachers reported that they had enjoyed teaching that year more than any year in the past. Here’s the twist: the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition was complete baloney. In fact, the “high-potentials” had been selected at random. The real subject of the test was not the students but the narratives that drive the relationship between the teachers and the students. What happened, Rosenthal discovered, was replacing one story—These are average kids—with a new one—These are special kids, destined to succeed—served as a locator beacon that reoriented the teachers, creating a cascade of behaviors that guided the student toward that future. It didn’t matter that the story was false, or that the children were, in fact, randomly selected. The simple, glowing idea—This child has unusual potential for intellectual growth—aligned motivations, awareness, and behaviors.
”
”
Daniel Coyle (The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups)
“
Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie careers. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years. So what made the other 5 percent stay? Prevailing wisdom would tell you that only the intellectually deficient or psychologically unstable would stick by a “cult” that long. But scholars have disproven this, too. In Barker’s studies, she compared the most committed Moonie converts with a control group—the latter had gone through life experiences that might make them very “suggestive” (“Like having an unhappy childhood or being rather low-intelligence,” she said). But in the end, the control group either didn’t join at all or left after a week or two. A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have “psychological problems” because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp. Steven Hassan, an ex-Moonie himself, used to recruit people to the Unification Church, so he knows a little something about the type of individual cults go for. “When I was a leader in the Moonies we selectively recruited . . . those who were strong, caring, and motivated,” he wrote in his 1998 book Combatting Cult Mind Control. Because it took so much time and money to enlist a new member, they avoided wasting resources on someone who seemed liable to break down right away. (Similarly, multilevel marketing higher-ups agree that their most profitable recruits aren’t those in urgent need of cash but instead folks determined and upbeat enough to play the long game. More on that in part 4.) Eileen Barker’s studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism.
”
”
Amanda Montell (Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism)
“
We are conscious of only a tiny fraction of the information that our brains process in each moment.1 Although we continually notice changes in our experience—in thought, mood, perception, behavior, etc.—we are utterly unaware of the neurophysiological events that produce them. In fact, we can be very poor witnesses to experience itself. By merely glancing at your face or listening to your tone of voice, others are often more aware of your state of mind and motivations than you are.
I generally start each day with a cup of coffee or tea—sometimes two. This morning, it was coffee (two). Why not tea? I am in no position to know. I wanted coffee more than I wanted tea today, and I was free to have what I wanted. Did I consciously choose coffee over tea? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence. Could I have “changed my mind” and switched to tea before the coffee drinker in me could get his bearings? Yes, but this impulse would also have been the product of unconscious causes. Why didn’t it arise this morning? Why might it arise in the future? I cannot know. The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness—rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.
The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move.2 Another lab extended this work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a “clock” composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.3 More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.4
These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions. One fact now seems indisputable: Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next—a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please—your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it.
The distinction between “higher” and “lower” systems in the brain offers no relief: I, as the conscious witness of my experience, no more initiate events in my prefrontal cortex than I cause my heart to beat. There will always be some delay between the first neurophysiological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if there weren’t—even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states—I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?
”
”
Sam Harris (Free Will)
“
gave up on the idea of creating “socialist men and women” who would work without monetary incentives. In a famous speech he criticized “equality mongering,” and thereafter not only did different jobs get paid different wages but also a bonus system was introduced. It is instructive to understand how this worked. Typically a firm under central planning had to meet an output target set under the plan, though such plans were often renegotiated and changed. From the 1930s, workers were paid bonuses if the output levels were attained. These could be quite high—for instance, as much as 37 percent of the wage for management or senior engineers. But paying such bonuses created all sorts of disincentives to technological change. For one thing, innovation, which took resources away from current production, risked the output targets not being met and the bonuses not being paid. For another, output targets were usually based on previous production levels. This created a huge incentive never to expand output, since this only meant having to produce more in the future, since future targets would be “ratcheted up.” Underachievement was always the best way to meet targets and get the bonus. The fact that bonuses were paid monthly also kept everyone focused on the present, while innovation is about making sacrifices today in order to have more tomorrow. Even when bonuses and incentives were effective in changing behavior, they often created other problems. Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. By the 1940s, the leaders of the Soviet Union, even if not their admirers in the West, were well aware of these perverse incentives. The Soviet leaders acted as if they were due to technical problems, which could be fixed. For example, they moved away from paying bonuses based on output targets to allowing firms to set aside portions of profits to pay bonuses. But a “profit motive” was no more encouraging to innovation than one based on output targets. The system of prices used to calculate profits was almost completely unconnected to the value of new innovations or technology. Unlike in a market economy, prices in the Soviet Union were set by the government, and thus bore little relation to value. To more specifically create incentives for innovation, the Soviet Union introduced explicit innovation bonuses in 1946. As early as 1918, the principle had been recognized that an innovator should receive monetary rewards for his innovation, but the rewards set were small and unrelated to the value of the new technology. This changed only in 1956, when it was stipulated that the bonus should be proportional to the productivity of the innovation. However, since productivity was calculated in terms of economic benefits measured using the existing system of prices, this was again not much of an incentive to innovate. One could fill many pages with examples of the perverse incentives these schemes generated. For example, because the size of the innovation bonus fund was limited by the wage bill of a firm, this immediately reduced the incentive to produce or adopt any innovation that might have economized on labor.
”
”
Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
“
Adam’s research demonstrates that leaders and employees who keep both personal and prosocial interests in mind do better in the long run than those who are 100 percent selfishly motivated.
”
”
Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
“
The civil service, which employed 70 percent of working Saudis, was filled with sinecures, nepotism, and corruption. This bureaucracy lacked both the motivation and administrative capacity to implement serious reform.
”
”
David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
“
Achievement is 60 percent determination, 40 percent action
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Martyr Meets World: To Solve The Hard Problem of Inhumanity)
“
In recent decades, as the economy has shifted and large companies promising lifelong employment have given way to freelance jobs and migratory careers, understanding motivation has become increasingly important. In 1980, more than 90 percent of the American workforce reported to a boss. Today more than a third of working Americans are freelancers, contractors, or in otherwise transitory positions. The workers who have succeeded in this new economy are those who know how to decide for themselves how to spend their time and allocate their energy. They understand how to set goals, prioritize tasks, and make choices about which projects to pursue. People who know how to self-motivate, according to studies, earn more money than their peers, report higher levels of happiness, and say they are more satisfied with their families, jobs, and lives.
”
”
Charles Duhigg (Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business)
“
Psychologists Joey Sprague and David Quadagno surveyed women from twenty-two to fifty-seven years of age and found that among those under thirty-five, 61 percent of the women said their primary motivation for sex was emotional, rather than physical. But among those over thirty-five, only 38 percent claimed their emotional motivations were stronger than the physical hunger for contact.
”
”
Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships)
“
To lovers out there …
A hurting relationship is a relationship that one is 100 percent fully concentrating on another person, and a good working relationship is a relationship that is 50/50. 50 is concentrating on another person and another 50 is concentrating on yourself.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
It does something to you when you are running close to what you perceive as our limit (back then, I still topped at 40 percent) and there is someone else out there who makes the difficult look effortless. It was obvious that his preparedness was several levels above our own. Captain Connolly did not show up to simply get through the program and graduate so he could collect some wings for his uniform and belong to the unspoken fraternity of supposed badasses at Fort Campbell. He came to explore what he was made of and grow. That required a willingness to set a new standard wherever possible and make a statement, not necessarily to our dumb asses, but to himself. He was respectful to all the instructors and the school, but he was not there to be led...
Most people love standards. It gives the brain something to focus on, which helps us reach a place of achievement. Organizational structure and atta' boys from our instructors or bosses keep us motivated to perform and to move up on that bell curve. Captain Connolly did not require external motivation. He trained to his own standard and used the existing structure for his own purposes. Air Assault School became his own personal octagon, where he could test himself on a level even the instructors hadn't imagined.
For the next nine days, he put his head down and quietly went about the business of smashing every single standard at Air Assault School. He saw the bar that the instructors pointed to and the rest of us were trying to tap as a hurdle to leap over, and he did it time and again. He understood that his rank only meant something if he sought out a different certification: an invisible badge that says, "I am the example. Follow me, motherfuckers, and I will show you that there is more to this life than so-called authority and stripes or candy on a uniform. I'll show you what true ambition looks like beyond all the external structure in a place of limitless mental growth."
He didn't say any of that. He didn't run his mouth at all. I can't recall him uttering word one in ten fucking days, but through his performance and extreme dedication, he dropped breadcrumbs for anybody who was awake and aware enough to follow him. He flashed his tool kit. He showed us what potent, silent, exemplary leadership looked like. He checked into every Gold Group run, which was led by the fastest instructor in that school, and volunteered to be the first to carry the flag...
His conditioning was clearly off the charts, and I'm not talking about the physical aspect alone. Being a physical specimen is one thing, but it takes so much more energy to stay mentally prepared enough to arrive every day at a place like Air Assault School on a mission to dominate. The fact that he was able to do that told me it couldn't possibly have been a one-time thing. It had to be the result of countless lonely hours in the gym, on the trails, and in the books. Most of his work was hidden, but it is within that unseen work that self-leaders are made. I suspect the reason he was capable of exceeding any and all standards consistently was because he was dedicated at a level most people cannot fathom in order to stay ready for any and all opportunities. p237
”
”
David Goggins (Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within)
“
In 1966, nearly 90 percent said they were strongly motivated to develop a meaningful philosophy of life, the most popular of all life goals. In 2000, only 42 percent said that. Instead, the most important life goal was being well-off financially. In 2015, 82 percent of students said financial success was what school was primarily for.
”
”
David Brooks (How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen)
“
Namumkin kuch bhi nhi h,hum wah sab kuch kr skte hain jo hum soch sakte h,wah
Bhi soch sakte h jo hmne kabhi socha nhi ki sab kuch sambhav h
”
”
Abhimanyu Kumawat
“
The next time you go to the supermarket, look closely at a can of peas. Think about all the work that went into it—the farmers, truckers, and supermarket employees, the miners and metalworkers who made the can—and think how miraculous it is that you can buy this can for under a dollar. At every step of the way, competition among suppliers rewarded those whose innovations shaved a penny off the cost of getting that can to you. If God is commonly thought to have created the world and then arranged it for our benefit, then the free market (and its invisible hand) is a pretty good candidate for being a god. You can begin to understand why libertarians sometimes have a quasi-religious faith in free markets. Now let’s do the devil’s work and spread chaos throughout the marketplace. Suppose that one day all prices are removed from all products in the supermarket. All labels too, beyond a simple description of the contents, so you can’t compare products from different companies. You just take whatever you want, as much as you want, and you bring it up to the register. The checkout clerk scans in your food insurance card and helps you fill out your itemized claim. You pay a flat fee of $10 and go home with your groceries. A month later you get a bill informing you that your food insurance company will pay the supermarket for most of the remaining cost, but you’ll have to send in a check for an additional $15. It might sound like a bargain to get a cartload of food for $25, but you’re really paying your grocery bill every month when you fork over $2,000 for your food insurance premium. Under such a system, there is little incentive for anyone to find innovative ways to reduce the cost of food or increase its quality. The supermarkets get paid by the insurers, and the insurers get their premiums from you. The cost of food insurance begins to rise as supermarkets stock only the foods that net them the highest insurance payments, not the foods that deliver value to you. As the cost of food insurance rises, many people can no longer afford it. Liberals (motivated by Care) push for a new government program to buy food insurance for the poor and the elderly. But once the government becomes the major purchaser of food, then success in the supermarket and food insurance industries depends primarily on maximizing yield from government payouts. Before you know it, that can of peas costs the government $30, and all of us are paying 25 percent of our paychecks in taxes just to cover the cost of buying groceries for each other at hugely inflated costs. That, says Goldhill, is what we’ve done to ourselves. As long as consumers are spared from taking price into account—that is, as long as someone else is always paying for your choices—things will get worse.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
“
I know – we all are experiencing a never ever seen global pandemic, tragic events all over, lack of governance, declining health, constant fear of loosing loved ones, loss of income & facing so many other severe challenges in our daily lives. Undoubtedly, this is a time of unprecedented struggle & upheaval for everyone.
But darling, there are people who are genuinely coping up with troubling times. They are able to handle time of adversity in better way & are better at tolerating all the associated feelings of stress, anxiety & sadness. If you will notice, you will see that these people will also rebound from these setbacks much quickly & mostly will become much better than they were before these terrible days.
Have you ever heard the phrase “Pressure Makes Diamonds?” That’s the secret.
I want you to also hold on, become more resilient, maintain a positive outlook, feel strong, amazing & remind yourself that you too have the favor of God. So far you survived 100 percent of your worst days & you are doing reasonably okay!
Remember strength does not come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t. If you can prepare & change your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs & philosophies, if you can do your best with whatever you have – for sure, you can grow as person, push the boundaries & experience a abundant & more fulfilling life.
Let you reset, recharge & rewire your brain for excelling in life no matter what’s going on, reconnect to what gives you fulfilment & realign your life around your real priorities & purpose.
I am praying God to strengthen you in all your tests, trials & tribulations. Let you get through these collective & personal tough times satisfyingly & most successfully. Blessings!
”
”
Rajes Goyal
“
Your fitness program will make you physically stronger. If you are new to resistance exercise, you should be able to improve your strength level by as much as 40 percent over a 12-month period. That will not only offset natural age-related strength decline, it will provide you with the power to accomplish the tasks that many people who age struggle with. At the same time, increased levels of physical strength add to the confidence that is the hallmark of a well-adjusted healthy individual.
”
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Nick Swettenham (Total Fitness After 40: The 7 Life Changing Foundations You Need for Strength, Health and Motivation in your 40s, 50s, 60s and Beyond)
“
Many of us would say we’re not surprised by these findings. After all, it seems rather obvious. Or does it? Grant surveyed several thousand executives to find out how important it was to them that they feel their work has value. The results: only 1 percent of the executives said managers should bother showing employees that their work makes a difference. If anything, many companies try to explain the value our work will have in our own lives, the benefits we will reap if we hit a goal, as opposed to the benefit that others will derive. But remember our biology: we are naturally cooperative animals that are biologically more inspired and motivated when we know we are helping others. This
”
”
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
“
Give me the specifications, and I’ll give you the man! What do you say to the control of motivation, building the interests which will make men most productive and most successful? Does that seem to you fantastic? Yet some of the techniques are available, and more can be worked out experimentally. Think of the possibilities!32 Frazier’s example of a more productive man is no accident. Like someone running a corporate digital detox retreat, he is obsessed with productivity, claiming fantastically that mankind is only 1 percent as productive as it could be.
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”
Jenny Odell (How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy)
“
ashtray.” Gradually, public opinion swayed public practice and public policy, forcing legislation and litigation that would affect most homes and every public space in America. After fifty years, fewer than 23 percent of Americans smoke, and hundreds of millions of lives and dollars have been affected or saved. Following that model, we could change parental practices in this country—not in one year or one presidential administration, but over several decades. It would work, however, only if we followed that three-pronged attack, because different people are motivated to change for
”
”
Jim Trelease (The Read-Aloud Handbook)
“
For a study in contrast, consider the European Union’s venture interventions. In 2001, the European Commission allocated more than €2 billion ($1.9 billion) for venture subsidies. But it failed to pair this capital with the design features underpinning Israel’s success. Europe did not recognize limited partnerships. It did not address burdensome labor-market regulations. It failed to build startup-friendly stock markets to facilitate VC exits. As a result, rather than crowding in private venture operators, the European initiative crowded them out: given the limited entrepreneurial opportunities in Europe, commercial VC partnerships were not interested in competing with subsidized public investors.54 Worse, because government-sponsored investors were less skilled and motivated than private ones, this displacement reduced the quality of European VC: deal selection and post-investment coaching deteriorated. From the beginning of the industry through the end of 2007, the average European venture fund generated a return of minus 4 percent.
”
”
Sebastian Mallaby (The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption)
“
As a group who can never afford the expensive fiction of having a nation—and whose bodies suffer from nationalism by being used as its means of reproduction—women of all races and cultures may be the most motivated to ask: How can we create a future beyond nationalism? After all, it has been around for less than five percent of humanity’s history. We know we have had more migratory and communal ways of sharing this Spaceship Earth. There could be again.
”
”
Gloria Steinem (Doing Sixty & Seventy)
“
Defeat is ninety five percent the condition and attitude of the heart and not the result of the struggle. We are defeated before we even put up the fight, that's why psychological warfare works!
”
”
Lucas D. Shallua
“
Dr. Fauci continued to insist that fully vaccinating the entire population was the only path to ending the pandemic. This assertion ignored the fact that COVID vaccines prevent neither transmission nor infection, nor reductions in viral loads. Overwhelming science has proven that vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals are equally likely to spread disease. A September 2021 Israeli study demonstrating that natural immunity provides 27x better protection against COVID than the Pfizer vaccine is just one of 29 recently published peer-reviewed studies that vouch for the superiority of natural immunity.29,30 What, then, is motivating the fierce campaign to nevertheless coercively vaccinate the vaccine-resistant 25 percent, other than a strategy to eliminate the control group to hide the deaths and injuries?
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
Nothing is more attractive than someone who has your back one hundred percent.
”
”
Widline Jean Jules (Daily Motivational Quotes: Inspirational & life-changing thoughts, Volume 2)
“
Here’s an example from the test Marty and his students developed to distinguish optimists from pessimists: Imagine: You can’t get all the work done that others expect of you. Now imagine one major cause for this event. What leaps to mind? After you read that hypothetical scenario, you write down your response, and then, after you’re offered more scenarios, your responses are rated for how temporary (versus permanent) and how specific (versus pervasive) they are. If you’re a pessimist, you might say, I screw up everything. Or: I’m a loser. These explanations are all permanent; there’s not much you can do to change them. They’re also pervasive; they’re likely to influence lots of life situations, not just your job performance. Permanent and pervasive explanations for adversity turn minor complications into major catastrophes. They make it seem logical to give up. If, on the other hand, you’re an optimist, you might say, I mismanaged my time. Or: I didn’t work efficiently because of distractions. These explanations are all temporary and specific; their “fixability” motivates you to start clearing them away as problems. Using this test, Marty confirmed that, compared to optimists, pessimists are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. What’s more, optimists fare better in domains not directly related to mental health. For instance, optimistic undergraduates tend to earn higher grades and are less likely to drop out of school. Optimistic young adults stay healthier throughout middle age and, ultimately, live longer than pessimists. Optimists are more satisfied with their marriages. A one-year field study of MetLife insurance agents found that optimists are twice as likely to stay in their jobs, and that they sell about 25 percent more insurance than their pessimistic colleagues. Likewise, studies of salespeople in telecommunications, real estate, office products, car sales, banking, and other industries have shown that optimists outsell pessimists by 20 to 40 percent.
”
”
Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
“
If we can serve three percent, that’s $30 billion, which is more than NASA’s budget. That was the inspiration for Starlink, to fund getting to Mars.” He pauses, then adds for emphasis, “The lens of getting to Mars has motivated every SpaceX decision.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
You will never know what your potential is unless you give life 100 percent effort every day.
”
”
Mike Rabe
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YOUR MIND WILL PLAY TRICKS ON YOU There are many days you will feel like you are riding a roller coaster. Just remember — this is normal. There is no way around it. You will have mental ups and downs in this journey of building your business. You get started in the business, and you are fired up! You have huge dreams and expectations. Then you get your first no, and your dream gets shattered. You stay with it, and go through some more rejection and finally recruit a great partner … woohoo! You are back on top of the world. Then that recruit quits the next week … you are back in the dumps. But then you recruit someone else, and you see hope again! And maybe your business starts to get traction and grows. But after a while, 90 percent of your downline has disappeared, and your mind plays tricks on you. Now you wonder if it is even worth recruiting anyone else, if most are only going to quit anyway. So now the phone weighs 300 pounds, and you just can’t get motivated to make calls.
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Brian Carruthers (Building an Empire:The Most Complete Blueprint to Building a Massive Network Marketing Business)
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I've always been a contrarian of sorts. I'm not exactly sure where this quality comes from. I am among the approximately 13 percent of people who are left-handed, and a great deal has been written about the differences in the ways southpaws process ideas and motivations. In any event, always fitting in or going with the crowd has never been a big concern for me if my head and heart lay elsewhere. Admittedly, my inclination to stray from the pack didn't go over too well with my drill sergeant. My armed forces stint offered many lessons, one of which was that if I was to be successful as an individual in whatever I chose to do, I would have to work, and think, independently.
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Charles H. Brandes (Brandes on Value: The Independent Investor)
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Why do some of us work hard and some of us sit on our asses all day? Dan Pink, a New York Times and Wallstreet Journal bestselling author, argues that there are three main motivators―and they’re not what you think. Money doesn’t make the list. In fact, money can be a demotivator. It turns out that once you get beyond work that only requires rudimentary cognitive skill, higher monetary rewards are inversely related to performance. Instead, emotion becomes the driving force. More specifically, Pink defines the three main motivators as autonomy, mastery, and purpose.2 This has been backed up by numerous scientific studies. Here’s one: “Psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer interviewed over 600 managers and found a shocking result. 95 percent of managers misunderstood what motivates employees. They thought what motivates employees was making money, getting raises and bonuses. In fact, after analyzing over 12,000 employee diary entries, they discovered that the number one work motivator was emotion, not financial incentive: It’s the feeling of making progress every day toward a meaningful goal.”3 Consider what this means. If you aren’t hardworking, maybe it’s not because you’re lazy, but because you hate what you’re working on! I believe there’s a hustler in all of us. It isn’t about your genetic makeup. It’s about your environment and the emotional state in which you’re operating. If you’re having trouble getting up in the morning and going to work, there’s a good chance you’d be happier hustling. You just need to find the right thing to be hustling toward, and the right people to support you. If you had all the free time in the world, what would you want to master? What would give you a sense of purpose? What would make your heart beat a little louder? The hustle is somewhere inside you. You just have to find it and set it free.
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Jesse Tevelow (Hustle: The Life Changing Effects of Constant Motion)
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as long as their salespeople maintain sales from existing clients at past levels or above, give them 100 percent of the profit on the first sale for every new client they bring in. They’ll be ten times more motivated to sell new clients.
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Jay Abraham (Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition)
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In life you will face a lot of Circuses. You will pay for your failures. But, if you persevere, if you let those failures teach you and strengthen you, then you will be prepared to handle life’s toughest moments. July 1983 was one of those tough moments. As I stood before the commanding officer, I thought my career as a Navy SEAL was over. I had just been relieved of my SEAL squadron, fired for trying to change the way my squadron was organized, trained, and conducted missions. There were some magnificent officers and enlisted men in the organization, some of the most professional warriors I had ever been around. However, much of the culture was still rooted in the Vietnam era, and I thought it was time for a change. As I was to find out, change is never easy, particularly for the person in charge. Fortunately, even though I was fired, my commanding officer allowed me to transfer to another SEAL Team, but my reputation as a SEAL officer was severely damaged. Everywhere I went, other officers and enlisted men knew I had failed, and every day there were whispers and subtle reminders that maybe I wasn’t up to the task of being a SEAL. At that point in my career I had two options: quit and move on to civilian life, which seemed like the logical choice in light of my recent Officer Fitness Report, or weather the storm and prove to others and myself that I was a good SEAL officer. I chose the latter. Soon after being fired, I was given a second chance, an opportunity to deploy overseas as the Officer in Charge of a SEAL platoon. Most of the time on that overseas deployment we were in remote locations, isolated and on our own. I took advantage of the opportunity to show that I could still lead. When you live in close quarters with twelve SEALs there isn’t anywhere to hide. They know if you are giving 100 percent on the morning workout. They see when you are first in line to jump out of the airplane and last in line to get the chow. They watch you clean your weapon, check your radio, read the intelligence, and prepare your mission briefs. They know when you have worked all night preparing for tomorrow’s training. As month after month of the overseas deployment wore on, I used my previous failure as motivation to outwork, outhustle, and outperform everyone in the platoon. I sometimes fell short of being the best, but I never fell short of giving it my best. In time, I regained the respect of my men. Several years later I was selected to command a SEAL Team of my own. Eventually I would go on to command all the SEALs on the West Coast.
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William H. McRaven (Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World)
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The will is half of success; the other half is equally divided into skills - ten percent, commitment - ten percent, courage - ten percent, hard work - ten percent, and planning/execution - ten percent. Without the will, even everything else is provided, you are still only half successful.
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John Taskinsoy
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Consider Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, celebrated for its beautiful detail, the surreal backdrop, and of course the subject’s enigmatic smile. More visitors have seen the Mona Lisa in person—on display behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre—than any other painting on the planet. But when researchers Jesse Prinz and Angelika Seidel asked subjects to consider a hypothetical scenario in which the Mona Lisa burned to a crisp, 80 percent of them said they’d prefer to see the ashes of the original rather than an indistinguishable replica.31 This should give us pause.
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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when articles previously published in a journal were resubmitted soon afterward with new obscure names and institutions, only 10 percent of them were noticed as having been published before, and of the remaining 90 percent, only 10 percent were accepted under the new names.
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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80 percent of people chose to award a scholarship to a member of their favored political party, even when another applicant had better grades. In fact, this political favoritism was stronger than racial favoritism.
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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Employee Engagement
“Employee Engagement” has become a very hot topic in recent years. The escalating statistics for disengagement are alarming. In 2015, the Gallup Polls’ “The State of the American Workforce” survey found that only 32.5 percent of the U.S. Workforce is engaged and committed where they work, and 54 percent say they would consider leaving their companies if they could receive a 20 percent raise elsewhere. Disengagement not only lowers performance, morale, and productivity, but it’s costing employers billions of dollars a year. It's a growing problem, which has many companies baffled.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
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11 Ways to Be More Engaged
1. Care about others.
2. Be 100 percent in the moment.
3. Keep focus on the person you are serving.
4. Try to get involved, engaged, and interactive.
5. Show interest in what matters to other people by listening, acknowledging, and responding.
6. Arrive in the moment anticipating creating a valuable interaction for yourself and others.
7. Move towards the things that inspire you and provide a sense of joy and connection.
8. Reconnect with the essence of yourself and be grounded in that essential relationship.
9. Maintain eye contact and deliver the non-verbal cues that you are fully with the other person.
10. Limit distractions— close the door, silence your phone, hold calls, put tasks aside, etc.
11. Show up to the moment being your best and giving your best.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
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1. Focus on the short trip. For supermarkets around the world (the same principle applies to all classes of trade), half of all shopping trips result in the purchase of five or fewer items, with one being the most common. These short trips typically account for one-third of store sales. The new strategy is to increase the size of each of those baskets by one or two items. Quick trippers spend money very fast, and getting them to buy one or two more items is far easier than motivating stock-up shoppers to buy ten or twenty more items. This focus, focus, focus on the quick trip could deliver an easy 30 percent sales lift (and a lot more when the synergies with other types of trips become apparent).
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Herb Sorensen (Inside the Mind of the Shopper: The Science of Retailing)
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The reason why most of our plans fail it is because when people are giving us a hand in what we do. We have our hands in our pockets or folded. 80 % is on you to make things happen. When people help you they help you with 20 %. If you don't have 80 % percent ready. Your dreams, goals or what you are trying to achieve, will fail even thou there are people helping you. Help yourself with 80 percent, before people help you with 20 percent to achieve your goals and dreams.
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D.J. Kyos
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Would anyone test the memory of human children by throwing them into a swimming pool to see if they remember where to get out? Yet the Morris Water Maze is a standard memory test used every day in hundreds of laboratories that make rats frantically swim in a water tank with high walls until they come upon a submerged platform that saves them. In subsequent trials, the rats need to remember the platform’s location. There is also the Columbia Obstruction Method, in which animals have to cross an electrified grid after varying periods of deprivation, so researchers can see if their drive to reach food or a mate (or for mother rats, their pups) exceeds the fear of a painful shock. Stress is, in fact, a major testing tool. Many labs keep their animals at 85 percent of typical body weight to ensure food motivation.
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Frans de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?)
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Such tensions might partly explain why the Gallup organization repeatedly finds just 13 percent of the world’s workforce likes going to work, despite the rise of popular books and research on employee engagement, organizational culture, and motivation.
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Zach Mercurio (The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose)
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One company I know took the art of using cubicles to kill motivation to a higher level. They found out that employees had all kinds of personal mementoes on their desks, so the management redid the cubicles and made them 20 percent smaller, with less space for anything personal, but more space for more people. Another company came up with an even more brilliant idea that nobody could “own” their own cubicle, designing the system such that those who showed up to work earliest in the morning could claim the ones closest the windows. None of the cubicles has anything but a desk, a place to connect a computer, and a chair. No one could establish a sense of connection to their workspace. Ultimately, by setting the atmosphere this way, the company communicated to the employees that they are valued only for their direct productivity and that they are easily replaceable.
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Dan Ariely (Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations (TED Books))
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In West's guide, rule-of-thumb guidance comes in two formats that most valuation experts recognize:  Percentage of annual sales: If a business had total sales of $ 100,000 last year and the multiple for that business was 40 percent of annual sales, the price based on that particular rule of thumb would be $ 40,000.  Multiple of earnings: An earnings multiplier makes the most sense to prospective buyers. It directly addresses the buyer's motive to make money: to achieve a return on investment. In many small companies, this multiple is commonly used against what is known as seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), which are earnings before accounting for the following items: • Income taxes • Nonrecurring income and expenses • Nonoperating income and expenses • Depreciating an amortization • Interest expense or income • Owner's total compensation for one owner/ operator after adjusting the total compensation of all owners to market value
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Lisa Holton (Business Valuation For Dummies)
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As part of an effort to prod college seniors to get tetanus shots, a group of students was given a lecture meant to educate them about the dangers of tetanus and the importance of getting inoculated against it. A large majority of those students reported that they were convinced and planned to get their shots, but in the end only 3 percent got them. Bu another group of students, who were presented with the same lecture, had a 28 percent inoculation rate. The difference? The second group was given a map of the campus and asked to plan their route to the health center and pick a date and time to go. Sometimes, you see, motivation isn't our problem. Rather, we need to identify life's everyday mental obstacles - regret, fatigue, overconfidence, fear, to name just four - and put ourselves into position to hurdle them.
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Gary Belsky (Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them: Lessons from the Life-Changing Science of Behavioral Economics)