Priority Busy Quotes

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Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.
Laura Vanderkam
We need to make sure that we never get too busy with life that we don’t have time to live.
Daniel Willey
ليس كافيًا أن تكون مشغولًا. فكذلك النمل. السؤال هو: بماذا نحن مشغولون ؟
Henry David Thoreau
Take the challenge of your life. Reach out to your goals. There is no limit to what you can achieve.
Lailah Gifty Akita
The problem with the world is that people are busy searching for keys but don’t know the locks that they would open.
Abhaidev (That Thing About You)
Here's the thing about people with good hearts: They give you excuses when you don't explain yourself. They accept the apologies you don't give. They see the best in you. They always lift you up, even if that means putting their own priorities aside. They will never be too "busy" for you. They make time, even when you don't. And you wonder why they're the most sensitive people, the most caring people, why they are willing to give so much of themselves with no expectation in return. You wonder why their existence is not so essential to your well-being. It's because they don't make you work hard for the attention they give you. They accept the love they think they deserve - and you accepted the love you think you're entitled to. Don't take them for granted. Fear the day when a good heart gives up on you. Our skies don't become grey out of nowhere, our sunshine does not allow the darkness to take over for no reason. A heart does turn cold unless it's been treated with coldness for a while
Najwa Zebian
The first priority of the business is to add value to the customers lives, in exchange for payment. At Mayflower-Plymouth, we're here to help your business figure this out, and to provide holistic solutions.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
We all have the same 24/7. What we do with our time becomes our priority. Choose what you do with your time and do not lead a life by default
Patt Hollinger Pickett
Even most of those who really never have time to read a book usually have more than enough time to listen to one.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
Karen Martin (The Outstanding Organization: Generate Business Results by Eliminating Chaos and Building the Foundation for Everyday Excellence)
You see it as me going back. I see it as me staying on track.
Germany Kent
The weird thing is that the more efficient, on task, on goal you are with your time, the more energy you have. Working with no traction, or for that matter simply wasting a day, does not relax you, it drains you.// Strange as it may seem, when you work a daily plan in pursuit of your written goals that flow from your mission statement born of your vision for living your dreams, you are energized after a tough long day.
Dave Ramsey (EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches)
Profits are a standard, not a priority. The business should price its products and services maximally above its expenses. But the priority and main focus should always be adding value to the customers lives. At Mayflower-Plymouth, we're here to help your business figure this out, and to provide holistic solutions.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
I‘m very aware that my personal life, my marriage, is the source of speculation and interest in the department and with the public. I can live with that. I’m also aware that my husband’s businesses, and his style of conducting his businesses, are also the source of speculation and interest. I have no particular problem with that. But I resent very much that my reputation and my husband’s character should be questioned this way. From the media, Commander, it’s to be expected, but not from my superior officer. Not from any member of the department I’ve served to the best of my ability. I want you to take note, Commander, that turning in my badge would be like cutting off my arm. But if it comes down to a choice between the job and my marriage, then I lose the arm.
J.D. Robb
Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him- the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store-he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something - a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug- he would resolutely ignore it. That focus allowed him to say no. He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options. He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
You are in control of your priorities – you can erase old priorities and define new priorities at will.
Isaiah Hankel (Black Hole Focus: How Intelligent People Can Create a Powerful Purpose for Their Lives)
In business, there is something that has a greater priority than profits — that’s God. Put God first and he will lead you in your business endeavors and ensure your profits.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Productivity isn’t about being a workhorse, keeping busy or burning the midnight oil... . It’s more about priorities, planning, and fiercely protecting your time.” —Margarita Tartakovsky
Gary Keller (The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results)
All of your precious resources - time, energy, talent, passion, and money - should only go to the areas of your life or your business that are best, are fixable, and are indespensable. Otherwise, average sets in and [your life] does not become what it was designed to be.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
In theory, the risk of business failure can be reduced to a number, the probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed. By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. "Playing it safe" may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of no trying to live the life you want today. Considering personal risk forces us to define personal success. We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Personal goals, on the other hand, leave us on our own, without this habit of useless measurement and comparison. Only the Whole Life Plan leads to personal success. It has the greatest chance of providing satisfaction and contentment that one can take to the grave, tomorrow. In the Deferred Life Plan there will always be another prize to covet, another distraction, a new hunger to sate. You will forever come up short.
Randy Komisar (The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur)
When someone tells you they’re too busy, it’s not that they mismanage their time, it’s that you’re not a priority.
Rob Liano
Values are deeply held personal beliefs that form your own priority code for living.
Stan Slap
One of the major priorities for a municipality should be to cultivate the conditions for a thriving business community.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases: groups of nine generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to groups of six, which do worse than groups of four. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” writes the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.” The one exception to this is online brainstorming.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Start today creating a vision for yourself, your life, and your career. Bounce back from adversity and create what you want, rebuild and rebrand. Tell yourself it's possible along the way, have patience, and maintain peace with yourself during the process.
Germany Kent
First Globals are ready to go anywhere, experience everything, and work and live in exotic places, and for them, family life takes priority over work life and a flexible, diverse, collaborative, fun learning environment is key.
Susan Scott (Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today)
The greatest tragedy in life is not death but life without a purpose—life with the wrong priorities. Life’s greatest challenge is in knowing what to do. The greatest mistake in life is to be busy but not effective. Life’s greatest failure is to be successful in the wrong assignment. Success in life is measured by the effective use of one’s time.
Myles Munroe (Kingdom Principles: Preparing for Kingdom Experience and Expansion (Kingdom series Book 2))
Busy is good, isn't it? Busy means we're hard at it, achieving our ends or "goals." Haven't had time to stop, or look around or think. That's considered the sign of a life well lived. Although people complain of it - another year gone, where did that one go? - tacitly, they're proud. Otherwise they wouldn't do it: you put your time where your priority is.
Sebastian Faulks (Engleby)
It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.
Stan Slap
Strive to be a person of action, good deeds and a willing vessel of hope.
Germany Kent (You Are What You Tweet: Harness the Power of Twitter to Create a Happier, Healthier Life)
It’s all about “Priorities” There's No Such Thing as "Busy
Abhysheq Shukla
Don't let circumstances determine your comittment level. Worthy comittments are prioritized regardless of circumstance.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Jesus understood his mission. He was not driven by the needs of others, though he often stopped to help hurting people. He was not driven by the approval of others, though he cared deeply for the lost and the broken. Ultimately, Jesus was driven by the Spirit. He was driven by his God-given mission. He knew his priorities and did not let the many temptations of a busy life deter him from his task.
Kevin DeYoung (Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem)
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact, and say: “This is not just.” It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to schoolteachers, social workers and other servants of the public to insure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
Martin Luther King Jr. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy Book 2))
We have to stop the glorification of busy. We need to change our mindset and redefine what it means to be productive. Productivity is not about doing more, it’s doing what’s most important. We need to stop trying to get more done and instead reset our focus on our own priorities. When we do that, our ideal lives can become our real, everyday lives.
Tonya Dalton (The Joy of Missing Out: Live More by Doing Less)
The line-by-line, sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the world was to be understood. "Knowing" the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them.
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, print put forward a definition of intelligence that gave priority to the objective, rational use of the mind and at the same time encouraged forms of public discourse with serious, logically ordered content. It is no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistent with that growth of a print culture, first in Europe and then in America.
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
Busy” = Out of Control “Every time people contact me, they say, ‘Look, I know you must be incredibly busy . . .’ and I always think, ‘No, I’m not.’ Because I’m in control of my time. I’m on top of it. ‘Busy,’ to me, seems to imply ‘out of control.’ Like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so busy. I don’t have any time for this shit!’ To me, that sounds like a person who’s got no control over their life.” TF: Lack of time is lack of priorities. If I’m “busy,” it is because I’ve made choices that put me in that position, so I’ve forbidden myself to reply to “How are you?” with “Busy.” I have no right to complain. Instead, if I’m too busy, it’s a cue to reexamine my systems and rules.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
If our lives are so busy, so filled with errands and responsibilities and passions that we feel we have no emotional capacity or time to take compassionate action when confronted with the opportunity to do so, we need to consider reordering our life priorities.
Alex Lickerman (The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self)
You can borrow time, but you can't steal it.
Kevin DeYoung (Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem)
Most organizations I’ve worked with have too many top priorities to achieve the level of focus they need to succeed.
Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
We could be at war with Eurasia and on the verge of cloning unicorns, and I’d have no clue. I’ve been busy. Searching. Scouring.
Ali Hazelwood (Bride)
Look at nature. The most urgent priority is the stewardship of capital
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Look at nature. The most urgent priority is the stewardship of capital.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion should be a top priority of every Chief People Officer — not as a matter of charity, but of corporate preservation.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Sometimes, things that don’t matter, are the only things that matter.
Harjeet Khanduja (Nothing About Business)
I’m too busy’ is another way of saying, ‘It’s not a priority.
Frank Sonnenberg (Listen to Your Conscience: That's Why You Have One)
The sooner we associate long hours and multitasking with incompetence and carelessness the better. The next time you hear boasts of executives pulling an all-nighter or holding conference calls in their cars, be sure to offer your condolences; it's grim being stuck in sweatshops run by managers too ignorant to understand productivity and risk. Working people like this is as smart as running your factory without maintenance. In manufacturing and engineering businesses, everyone learns that the top priority is asset integrity: protecting the machinery on which the business depends. In knowledge-based economies, that machinery is the mind.
Margaret Heffernan (Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril)
The fundamental priority of every business is to create value for its customers or clients — to improve their lives in some way through the products or services being sold by the business.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (4 Business Lessons From Jesus: A businessmans interpretation of Jesus' teachings, applied in a business context.)
The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” writes the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Many modern businesses have become proficient at mining data. In fact the mining of data is becoming almost routine. But as we advance further into the 21rst century and the 22nd century, the utilization of data begins to take priority. So it's not just about collecting all this data, but also about getting really creative with generating new ways to utilize that data in the quest to add value.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Jobs also used the meetings to enforce focus. At Robert Friedland's farm, his job had been to prune the apple trees so that they would stay strong, and that became a metaphor for his pruning at Apple. Instead of encouraging each group to let product lines proliferate based on marketing considerations, or permitting a thousand ideas to bloom, Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. " There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him," Cook said. " That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit.
Thomas Frank
I have noticed over the past three years that most African Christians depend on their pastor or preachers for directions in life than their lecturers, politicians and nurses. That tells why most people refuse certain medical priorities with regards to their pastor's messages. I think if every pastor should have entrepreneurial knowledge coupled with spiritual integrity, Africa will shake!
Israelmore Ayivor (The Great Hand Book of Quotes)
The only way for people to embrace a message is to hear it over a period of time, in a variety of different situations, and preferably from different people. That’s why great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers as much as anything else. Their top two priorities are to set the direction of the organization and then to ensure that people are reminded of it on a regular basis.
Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
What we value and our priorities in life make us who we are. We are unique not only because of our outward differences, but arguably more importantly, our inward differences. Our values steer our personal and professional lives and have a distinct imprint on the decisions we make.
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
You cannot pursue all your goals simultaneously or satisfy all your desires at once. And it's an emotional drain to think you can. Instead, you must focus on long-term fulfillment rather than short-term success and, at various points in your life, think carefully about your priorities.
Eric C. Sinoway
Take all those things that would propose to be important, and weigh them upon the scale of your soul. Asking how much each thing actually impacts, not just the moment, but the years ahead. Discard all that is trivial masquerading as significant, and reserve your days for those things that truly matter.
L.M. Browning (Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations)
the definition of the responsibility of business must: Advance a purpose: Offer people a sense of belonging and a feeling that their lives and their work have value beyond the physical work. Protect people: Operate our companies in a way that protects the people who work for us, the people who buy from us and the environments in which we live and work. Generate profit: Money is fuel for a business to remain viable so that it may continue to advance the first two priorities.
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
My appreciation of the power of hospitality and my desire to harness it have been the greatest contributors to whatever success my restaurants and businesses have had. I’ve learned how crucially important it is to put hospitality to work, first for the people who work for me and subsequently for all the other people and stakeholders who are in any way affected by our business—in descending order, our guests, community, suppliers, and investors. I call this way of setting priorities “enlightened hospitality.” It stands some more traditional business approaches on their head, but it’s the foundation of every business decision and every success we’ve had.
Danny Meyer
... you will transform your ability to produce consistent and spectacular entrepreneurial results. You must create a foundational schedule that adds structure and intentionality to your days and weeks. A foundational schedule is a pre-determined, recurring schedule that is made up of focused time blocks dedicated to your highest priority activities.
Hal Elrod (The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs: Elevate Yourself to Elevate Your business)
Get focused and make your business your priority. When you sacrifice time and energy for something you want, sooner or later, you will be rewarded for your efforts.
Germany Kent
How can we manage production if we don’t know what the demand, priorities, status of work in process, and resource availability are?
Gene Kim (The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win)
A balanced scoreboard needs to provide the balanced view of business progress; perhaps it also has the “unbalanced” nature to do prioritization.
Pearl Zhu (Performance Master: Take a Holistic Approach to Unlock Digital Performance)
The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realize they can't do everything.
Kevin DeYoung (Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem)
If you're in a tough spot, stop focusing on it. Focus on how you can learn and move on.
Bryan Cohen (How to Work for Yourself: 100 Ways to Make the Time, Energy and Priorities to Start a Business, Book or Blog)
Perfectionism is an enemy to finishing your first project, and finishing your first project is the key to finishing multiple projects.
Bryan Cohen (How to Work for Yourself: 100 Ways to Make the Time, Energy and Priorities to Start a Business, Book or Blog)
If we keep the calves away from their mothers there is a real risk that dairy production will go out of business in markets where animal welfare is a priority for the consumers.
Sigrid Agenäs
I liked this about Drew: always to the point when talking about business, but always philosophical when talking about life. Attending his birthday party had been a priority since I met him four years ago
Penny Reid (Beard Science (Winston Brothers, #3))
You ask perhaps if one should take the maid herself? Such a plan brings the greatest risk with it. In one case, fresh from bed, she’ll get busy, in another be tardy, in one case you’re a prize for her mistress, in the other herself. There’s chance in it: even if it favours the idea, my advice nevertheless is to abstain. I don’t pick my way over sharp peaks and precipices, no youth will be caught out being lead by me. Still, while she’s giving and taking messages, if her body pleases you as much as her zeal, make the lady your first priority, her companion the next: Love should never be begun with a servant.
Ovid (The Art of Love)
I knew the biggest priority was to create a winning culture in which every member could thrive and excel. This meant we would not only have to create the right culture for the team but also for the rest of the organization.
Jon Gordon (You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life (Jon Gordon))
There's a significant social element in my business, and I want a wife who can help balance the conversation. Playing hostess and accompanying me as needed for whatever reason comes up. Dinners, parties, charitable events. No more than a couple times a week. Also, our children - as many as you'd like - come first. They need to be your number one priority. And lastly it means respecting both me and our marriage vows. She understood. "Fidelity." "Fidelity.
Mira Lyn Kelly (Waking Up Married (Waking Up, #1))
A home that nourishes life embraces the little moments and appreciates the rhythmic seasons of life, including the time necessary to cook real food from scratch...It doesn't have to take too much time, however, with efficient menu planning and wisely planned trips to the grocery store and farmers' market. The payoffs are astronomical - better health, good stewardship of our environment, and setting a good example for our children are just a few of the benefits. It also fosters an appreciation of the ebbs and flows of seasons because you'll be using fresh ingredients that are more readily available (and of higher quality) when they are in season. If you feel too busy to cook from scratch, then I argue that you're too busy, period. Reevaluate your priorities and commitments. If you want to live a healthy, long life and to pass the same luxury on to your children, then you MUST take the time to cook real food
Tsh Oxenreider (Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living)
. . . Neither ecological nor social engineering will lead us to a conflict-free, simple path . . . Utilitarians and others who simply advise us to be happy are unhelpful, because we almost always have to make a choice either between different kinds of happiness--different things to be happy _about_--or between these and other things we want, which nothing to do with happiness. . . . Do we find ourselves a species naturally free from conflict? We do not. There has not, apparently, been in our evolution a kind of rationalization which might seem a possible solution to problems of conflict--namely, a takeover by some major motive, such as the desire for future pleasure, which would automatically rule out all competing desires. Instead, what has developed is our intelligence. And this in some ways makes matters worse, since it shows us many desirable things that we would not otherwise have thought of, as well as the quite sufficient number we knew about for a start. In compensation, however, it does help us to arbitrate. Rules and principles, standards and ideals emerge as part of a priority system by which we guide ourselves through the jungle. They never make the job easy--desires that we put low on our priority system do not merely vanish--but they make it possible. And it is in working out these concepts more fully, in trying to extend their usefulness, that moral philosophy begins. Were there no conflict, it [moral philosophy] could never have arisen. The motivation of living creatures does got boil down to any single basic force, not even an 'instinct of self-preservation.' It is a complex pattern of separate elements, balanced roughly in the constitution of the species, but always liable to need adjusting. Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means to survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural. . . An obsessive creature dominated constantly by one kind of motive, would not survive. All moral doctrine, all practical suggestions about how we ought to live, depend on some belief about what human nature is like. The traditional business of moral philosophy is attempting to understand, clarify, relate, and harmonize so far as possible the claims arising from different sides of our nature. . . . One motive does not necessarily replace another smoothly and unremarked. There is _ambivalence_, conflict behavior.
Mary Midgley (Beast and Man)
To be successful, any business requires a concentrated investment of time and energy; wherein each stage of the development has its tactics and priorities, in regards to which activities and when it makes sense to invest the efforts in.
Sahara Sanders
When you are the central character in a seemingly boiling pit of “busy-ness” the time will come when the pace of decline cannot be countered. You build yourself the circumstances of ultimate failure by failing to grow, by failing to act on your learnings.
Tony Curl
Establishing a company from scratch can be challenging. It requires 100% commitment. However, your priorities will demonstrate your true commitment. Without commitment, it is impossible to achieve success in anything, whether it be business or relationships.
Abhysheq Shukla (Crosspaths Multitude to Success)
The main thing to consider if you don’t have the unfair advantage of Money is to build a business that doesn’t have a high startup cost, and doesn’t need to burn much money before it becomes profitable. In other words, get paying customers fast. Let that be your first priority.
Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed)
Vagueness causes confusion, but clarity of thought and purpose is a huge advantage in business. Good leadership requires a never‐ending process of boiling things down to their essentials. Spell out what you mean! If priorities are not clearly understood at the top, how distorted will they be down the line?
Frank Slootman (Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity)
I wasn't about to admit to the lady I was hoping to impress that I wished to be a man of business. I wasn't that drunk." Anna was certain that, for as long as she lived, she would never understand how it was the inebriated sorted out their priorities. Drunk enough to offer marriage, but still sufficiently sober to keep his secret? It was baffling.
Alissa Johnson (Practically Wicked)
I like the idea of being rigorous about friendship. My friends tend to be accomplished, overcommitted people, many of them with busy family lives and heavy-duty jobs. I understood it wasn’t always easy for them to get away. But this was part of the point. We were all so used to sacrificing for our kids, our spouses, and our work. I had learned through my years of trying to find balance in my life that it was okay to flip those priorities and care only for ourselves once in a while. I was more than happy to wave this banner on behalf of my friends, to create the reason—and the power of a tradition—for a whole bunch of women to turn to kids, spouses, and colleagues and say, Sorry, folks, I’m doing this for me.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
invention is often the mother of necessity, rather than vice versa. A good example is the history of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, the most original invention of the greatest inventor of modern times. When Edison built his first phonograph in 1877, he published an article proposing ten uses to which his invention might be put. They included preserving the last words of dying people, recording books for blind people to hear, announcing clock time, and teaching spelling. Reproduction of music was not high on Edison’s list of priorities. A few years later Edison told his assistant that his invention had no commercial value. Within another few years he changed his mind and did enter business to sell phonographs—but for use as office dictating machines. When other entrepreneurs created jukeboxes by arranging for a phonograph to play popular music at the drop of a coin, Edison objected to this debasement, which apparently detracted from serious office use of his invention. Only after about 20 years did Edison reluctantly concede that the main use of his phonograph was to record and play music.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
We had better want the consequences of what we believe or disbelieve, because the consequences will come! . . . But how can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite? . . . The basic strands which have bound us together socially have begun to fray, and some of them have snapped. Even more pressure is then placed upon the remaining strands. The fact that the giving way is gradual will not prevent it from becoming total. . . . Given the tremendous asset that the family is, we must do all we can within constitutional constraints to protect it from predatory things like homosexuality and pornography. . . . Our whole republic rests upon the notion of “obedience to the unenforceable,” upon a tremendous emphasis on inner controls through self-discipline. . . . Different beliefs do make for different behaviors; what we think does affect our actions; concepts do have consequences. . . . Once society loses its capacity to declare that some things are wrong per se, then it finds itself forever building temporary defenses, revising rationales, drawing new lines—but forever falling back and losing its nerve. A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything! Take away a consciousness of eternity and see how differently time is spent. Take away an acknowledgement of divine design in the structure of life and then watch the mindless scurrying to redesign human systems to make life pain-free and pleasure-filled. Take away regard for the divinity in one’s neighbor, and watch the drop in our regard for his property. Take away basic moral standards and observe how quickly tolerance changes into permissiveness. Take away the sacred sense of belonging to a family or community, and observe how quickly citizens cease to care for big cities. Those of us who are business-oriented are quick to look for the bottom line in our endeavors. In the case of a value-free society, the bottom line is clear—the costs are prohibitive! A value-free society eventually imprisons its inhabitants. It also ends up doing indirectly what most of its inhabitants would never have agreed to do directly—at least initially. Can we turn such trends around? There is still a wealth of wisdom in the people of this good land, even though such wisdom is often mute and in search of leadership. People can often feel in their bones the wrongness of things, long before pollsters pick up such attitudes or before such attitudes are expressed in the ballot box. But it will take leadership and articulate assertion of basic values in all places and in personal behavior to back up such assertions. Even then, time and the tides are against us, so that courage will be a key ingredient. It will take the same kind of spunk the Spartans displayed at Thermopylae when they tenaciously held a small mountain pass against overwhelming numbers of Persians. The Persians could not dislodge the Spartans and sent emissaries forward to threaten what would happen if the Spartans did not surrender. The Spartans were told that if they did not give up, the Persians had so many archers in their army that they would darken the skies with their arrows. The Spartans said simply: “So much the better, we will fight in the shade!
Neal A. Maxwell
Have you lost your teeny tiny mind, you too-tall, too-skinny, too-crazy jerk?” “Oh, look who’s talking, Miss Let’s Blunder Around the Time Stream and Hang the Consequences! Thanks to you, we’ve got a dead Marc and a live Marc in the same timeline . . . in the same house! Thanks to you, I got chomped on by a dim, blonde, undead, selfish, whorish, blood-sucking leech when I was minding my own business in the past.” “Don’t you call me dim!” “Um. Everyone. Perhaps we should—” Tina began. “Wait, when did this happen?” Marc asked. He had the look of a man desperately trying to buy a vowel. “Past, an hour ago? Past, last year? Help me out.” “Oh, biiiiig surprise!” Laura threw her (perfectly manicured) hands in the air. “Let me guess, you were soooo busy banging your dead husband that you haven’t had time to tell anybody anything.” “I was getting to it,” I whined. “Then after not telling anyone anything and not being proactive—or even active!—you grow up to destroy the world and bring about eternal nuclear winter or whatever the heck that was and how do you deal with your foreknowledge of terrible events to come? Have sex!” “An affirmation of life?” Sinclair suggested. Never, I repeat, never had I loved him more. I was torn between slugging my sister and blowing my husband. Hmm. Laura might have a point about my priorities . . . but jeez. Look at him. Yum. “—even do it and what do you have to say for yourself? Huh?” “You’re just uptight, repressed, smug, antisex, and jealous, you Antichristing morally superior, fundamentally evil bitch.” Laura and Marc gasped. My husband groaned.
MaryJanice Davidson (Undead and Undermined (Undead, #10))
To pray in the midst of the mundane is simply and strongly to assert that this dull and tiring day is holy and its simple labors are the stuff of God's saving presence for me now. To pray simply because it is prayer time is no small act of immersion in the God who is willing to wait for us to be conscious, to be ready, to be willing to become new in life. Prayer, Benedictine spirituality demonstrates, is not a matter of mood. To pray only when we feel like it is more to seek consolation than to risk conversion. To pray only when it suits us is to want God on our terms. To pray only when it is convenient is to make the God-life a very low priority in a list of better opportunities. To pray only when it feels good is to court total emptiness when we most need to be filled. The hard fact is that nobody finds time for prayer. The time must be taken. There will always be something more pressing to do, something more important to be about than the apparently fruitless, empty act of prayer. But when that attitude takes over, we have begun the last trip down a very short road because, without prayer, the energy for the rest of life runs down. The fuel runs out. We become our own worst enemies: we call ourselves too tired and too busy to pray when, in reality, we are too tired and too busy not to pray. Eventually, the burdens of the day wear us down and we no longer remember why we decided to do what we're doing: work for this project, marry this woman, have these children, minister in this place. And if I cannot remember why I decided to do this, I cannot figure out how I can go on with it. I am tired and the vision just gets dimmer and dimmer.
Joan D. Chittister
The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don’t want to earn a good return on their investment, but it’s not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They’re also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They’ve learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they’ve created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants.
Bo Burlingham (Small Giants: Companies That Choose to be Great Instead of Big)
Three, no matter what career you choose, do your best to hold high its traditional professional values, now swiftly eroding, in which serving the client is always the highest priority. And don’t ignore the greater good of your community, your nation, and your world. As William Penn pointed out, “We pass through this world but once, so do now any good you can do, and show now any kindness you can show, for we shall not pass this way again.”   As
John C. Bogle (Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life)
thousand flowers bloom. Sometimes it’s nice to be in the hands of a control freak. • • • Jobs’s intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him—the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store—he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something—a legal annoyance, a business issue,
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
Rare are the leaders of organizations who will tell you that their people don’t matter. However, there is a big difference between understanding the value of the people inside an organization and actually making decisions that consider their needs. It’s like saying, “my kids are my priority,” but always putting work first. What kind of family dynamic or relationship with our kids do we think results? The same is true in business. When we say our people matter but we don’t actually care for them, it can shatter trust and create a culture of paranoia, cynicism, and self-interest. This is not some highfalutin management theory—it’s biology. We are social animals and we respond to the environments we’re in. Good people put in a bad environment are capable of doing bad things. People who may have done bad things, put in a good environment, are capable of becoming remarkable, trustworthy, and valuable members of an organization. This is why leadership matters. Leaders set the culture. Leaders are responsible for overseeing the environment in which people are asked to work . . . and the people will act in accordance with that culture.
Bob Chapman (Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family)
Never, not in her wildest dreams, had she dared to imagine that she'd be that important to someone. As if she was air and without her, he couldn't breathe. "I love you too," she whispered. "And I forgive future Sailor for being a dumbass." Linking her arms around his neck, she spoke through the storm inside her. "In fact, I think future Sailor is going to be an incredible man I'll adore more with each and every day." "Yeah?" His lips kicked up in that familiar smile, but there was a question in his eyes, a quiet hunger. "What's he going to do?" Ísa knew what he was asking her, what he needed her to tell him. "He's going to be a man who works hard but who has time for the people he loves. And he definitely has time to get up to wicked things with a certain redhead." "I like this guy's priorities already." "He's also the kind of father who takes a turn doing the school run because he enjoys spending time with his child." It was scary doing this, laying out her dreams, but Sailor had given her everything. Ísa would be brave enough to give him the same back. "He has time to play with his baby, and to kiss his wife, and even if he forgets things now and then, or if he gets a little busy for a while, it's all right because his wife and child and all the members of his family know they're loved beyond measure." Perfection had never been what Ísa wanted. "Because when it matters, he's there. He sees the people who love him." Demon-blue eyes solemn, Sailor said, "I can do that." It was a vow. "I can be that guy." "You already are." Ísa whispered. "You're my dream, Sailor." But Sailor shook his head. "You ain't seen nothing yet, spitfire. I'm going to court the hell out of you." After a meditative pause, he added, "Nakedness during said courting is optional but highly encouraged." He was wonderful. And he was hers.
Nalini Singh (Cherish Hard (Hard Play, #1))
billionaire Jeff Hoffman recently spoke at one of the Quantum Leap Mastermind retreats that my business partner, Jon Berghoff, and I cohost, and of the many takeaways that I wrote down, the following stood out most: “You can’t win a gold medal at more than one [sport].” Let that sink in for a minute. Most Olympic athletes spend their entire lives focused on developing themselves to be best in the world at one thing. And remember what we learned in the last chapter, that when you choose and commit to one mission, achieving your other goals will become more probable, because you will be living in alignment with your highest priority.
Hal Elrod (The Miracle Equation: The Two Decisions That Turn Your Biggest Goals from Possible, to Probable, to Inevitable)
Jobs’s intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him—the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store—he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something—a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug—he would resolutely ignore it. That focus allowed him to say no. He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
Do you really think that the Revolution is a ridiculous proposition? That we cannot engineer our own structures? What's ridiculous is the system we have now. If we were starting society anew, who among us would propose a monarchy, an aristocracy, a financial elite that exploits the earth and farms its population? If at one of the local or regional meetings that we have to govern our community someone proposed, instead of equality, that all of us, including the poorest among us, donated a percentage of our income to a super-rich family with a little old lady at its helm who would turn up annually in our parliament, draped in jewels and finery, to tell us that austerity had to continue, you'd tell them they were mental. If someone said that we should give 64 per cent of British land to 0.28 per cent of the population, we would not vote for it. If trade agreements were proposed that meant local businesses were shackled so that transnational corporations could create a farcical tyrannical economy where produce was needlessly transported around the world for their gain and to the detriment of everyone else, it would be forbidden. If energy companies said they wanted to be run for huge profit, without regulation, whilst harming the environment, we wouldn't allow it. That pharmaceutical and food companies could run their own governing bodies, flood the world with inferior and harmful products that damage and even kill the people that use them, we would not tolerate it. Here is the truth they fight so hard to suppress: to create a better world, the priority is not the implementation of new systems, though that is necessary, it is a refusal to cooperate with the obsolete and harmful structures that are already in place.
Russell Brand (Revolution)
Be Stingy with Your Time Your time is the most valuable commodity you have – be extremely stingy about it! In fact, time is your biggest asset. To achieve business minimalism, you have to treat time like something tangible. It’s not an unlimited resource, as we only have 24 hours a day. It’s not something you can give to everyone. It’s not something we can get back once it’s gone. Before you say yes to anything, figure out if it contributes to your goals or is an unnecessary time-waster. Choose to communicate by email instead of meeting for lunch. Don’t join business groups if it doesn’t contribute to your bottom line. Don’t volunteer to be on a board if it doesn’t move your business forward. I like doing those things, but I don’t need to do them. It’s up to us to figure out what our priorities are, and focus on those things first. If you focus on unnecessary time-wasters first, you won’t reach your goals. It’s really that simple. I
Liesha Petrovich (Creating Business Zen: Your Path from Chaos to Harmony)
George Romney’s private-sector experience typified the business world of his time. His executive career took place within a single company, American Motors Corporation, where his success rested on the dogged (and prescient) pursuit of more fuel-efficient cars.41 Rooted in a particular locale, the industrial Midwest, AMC was built on a philosophy of civic engagement. Romney dismissed the “rugged individualism” touted by conservatives as “nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”42 Nor was this dismissal just cheap talk: He once returned a substantial bonus that he regarded as excessive.43 Prosperity was not an individual product, in Romney’s view; it was generated through bargaining and compromises among stakeholders (managers, workers, public officials, and the local community) as well as through individual initiative. When George Romney turned to politics, he carried this understanding with him. Romney exemplified the moderate perspective characteristic of many high-profile Republicans of his day. He stressed the importance of private initiative and decentralized governance, and worried about the power of unions. Yet he also believed that government had a vital role to play in securing prosperity for all. He once famously called UAW head Walter Reuther “the most dangerous man in Detroit,” but then, characteristically, developed a good working relationship with him.44 Elected governor in 1962 after working to update Michigan’s constitution, he broke with conservatives in his own party and worked across party lines to raise the minimum wage, enact an income tax, double state education expenditures during his first five years in office, and introduce more generous programs for the poor and unemployed.45 He signed into law a bill giving teachers collective bargaining rights.46 At a time when conservatives were turning to the antigovernment individualism of Barry Goldwater, Romney called on the GOP to make the insurance of equal opportunity a top priority. As
Jacob S. Hacker (American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper)
[There is] no direct relationship between IQ and economic opportunity. In the supposed interests of fairness and “social justice”, the natural relationship has been all but obliterated. Consider the first necessity of employment, filling out a job application. A generic job application does not ask for information on IQ. If such information is volunteered, this is likely to be interpreted as boastful exaggeration, narcissism, excessive entitlement, exceptionalism [...] and/or a lack of team spirit. None of these interpretations is likely to get you hired. Instead, the application contains questions about job experience and educational background, neither of which necessarily has anything to do with IQ. Universities are in business for profit; they are run like companies, seek as many paying clients as they can get, and therefore routinely accept people with lukewarm IQ’s, especially if they fill a slot in some quota system (in which case they will often be allowed to stay despite substandard performance). Regarding the quotas themselves, these may in fact turn the tables, advantaging members of groups with lower mean IQ’s than other groups [...] sometimes, people with lower IQ’s are expressly advantaged in more ways than one. These days, most decent jobs require a college education. Academia has worked relentlessly to bring this about, as it gains money and power by monopolizing the employment market across the spectrum. Because there is a glut of college-educated applicants for high-paying jobs, there is usually no need for an employer to deviate from general policy and hire an applicant with no degree. What about the civil service? While the civil service was once mostly open to people without college educations, this is no longer the case, and quotas make a very big difference in who gets hired. Back when I was in the New York job market, “minorities” (actually, worldwide majorities) were being spotted 30 (thirty) points on the civil service exam; for example, a Black person with a score as low as 70 was hired ahead of a White person with a score of 100. Obviously, any prior positive correlation between IQ and civil service employment has been reversed. Add to this the fact that many people, including employers, resent or feel threatened by intelligent people [...] and the IQ-parameterized employment function is no longer what it was once cracked up to be. If you doubt it, just look at the people running things these days. They may run a little above average, but you’d better not be expecting to find any Aristotles or Newtons among them. Intelligence has been replaced in the job market with an increasingly poor substitute, possession of a college degree, and given that education has steadily given way to indoctrination and socialization as academic priorities, it would be naive to suppose that this is not dragging down the overall efficiency of society. In short, there are presently many highly intelligent people working very “dumb” jobs, and conversely, many less intelligent people working jobs that would once have been filled by their intellectual superiors. Those sad stories about physics PhD’s flipping burgers at McDonald's are no longer so exceptional. Sorry, folks, but this is not your grandfather’s meritocracy any more.
Christopher Michael Langan
They sat islanded in their foreignness, irrelevant now that the holiday season had ended, anachronistic, outstaying their welcome, no longer necessary to anyone's plans. Priorities had shifted; the little town was settling down for its long uninterrupted hibernation. No one came here in the winter. The weather was too bleak, the snow too distant, the amenities too sparse to tempt visitors. And they felt that the backs of the residents had been turned on them with a sigh of relief, reminding them of their transitory nature, their fundamental unreality. And when Monica at last succeeded in ordering coffee, they still sat, glumly, for another ten minutes, before the busy waitress remembered their order. 'Homesick,' said Edith finally. 'Yes.' But she thought of her little house as if it had existed in another life, another dimension. She thought of it as something to which she might never return. The seasons had changed since she last saw it; she was no longer the person who could sit up in bed in the early morning and let the sun warm her shoulders and the light make her impatient for the day to begin. That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself. She bent her head over her coffee, trying to believe that it was the steam rising from the cup that was making her eyes prick. This cannot go on, she thought.
Anita Brookner (Hotel du Lac)
If YOUR free READ it calmly. This to all my FOLKS and MYSELF our expectations, our needs, our dreams, our destiny, our life style, Our likes and dislikes. we always RUN around so many things without even THINKING. Have a look on our SATISFACTION list # new gadget or a mobile for example fun for 2 months? # New bike fun for "2 months" . # New car for "3"? # Getting into a relationship wantedly as we are alone max 3/4 months? # Revenge ? A weak? Month? # flirting ? 2/3 months # sex ? Few mins # boozing, joint or a fag? Few hours? # addicting to something leaving behind everything? One year? # your example of anything repeatedly done for satisfaction? Max? Get a number yourself! ¦¦¦ Even though we satisfy our soul by all the above. Passing day by day. Years passed. Yet left with the same IRRITATING feeling to satisfy our needs. ONE after ANOTHER . ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ Some day we realize it was " pure SELFISH satisfaction " and left with a "GUILT " and EMPTINESS . questioning LIFE ! ¦¦¦ "In the RAMPAGE of getting everything we wished. We might not realize what we MISSED . Being CARELESS of our surrounding." "Feelings left hurt and hearts broken. Family friends and people we cares and who cares us. PRIORITIES made by ourself to be satisfied even here." If LIFE was just to satisfy what ever we WISHED for. Was it A life worth lived? May be! Yes. But it's SURE you end up questioning life with BLACKNESS ! # So many questions unanswered. Our EXISTENCE ? Our DESTINY ? To question the existence of God and HEAVEN .? At Last questioning the existence of UNIVERSE itself? The whole system CRACKS a nerve! Why spoil our LIFE when we are the creators of our LIFE ! When we are capable of finding an answer to does questions by our self Finding that true meaning of LIFE beyond all the mess we live by daily. which is Going to satisfy us. We need to realize by now our Every action should lead to Happiness and satisfaction of the people around us. It's the real paradise feeling we all wish for. The real deal. We disrupt our LIFE in the rampage of getting everything we need which can automatically be provided by LIFE . When we start sacrificing our LIFE in a positive way being busy fulfilling the needs of our dears ones. They indeed be busy trying to fulfill our needs and wishes. It's giving some things and getting something back. With less expectations. Rather than grabbing. A SECRET for a PERFECT LIFE which we FAIL to live by. Starting from FORGIVING everyone who tumbles in our path trying to steal away our positive life and happiness. Because as we all are tamed to do MISTAKE at some point. There is not much TIME left to waste by hating and cursing LIFE when we can start LIVING right now. "A REMINDER just to make sure we try to be SELFLESS and find that UNMATCHED HAPPINESS and SATISFACTION ." ~~¦¦ LIFE is complex to understand yet so SIMPLE ¦¦ ¶¶ Never be in a hurry on GETTING on to something you might be left with NOTHING ¶¶ << Being SELFISH makes us a HEALTHY human but being SELFLESS makes you A HUMAN >> «« LIFE is meaningful when we forget about our THIRST and QUENCH the thirst of OTHERS .»» RETHINK AND REDEFINE LIFE ¶¶ ~ Sharath kumar G .
Sharath Kumar G