Tony Schwartz Quotes

Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.

Watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food.

Author Tony Schwartz says, “Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.

Each of us has a finite reservoir of energy in any given day. Whatever amount of energy we spend obsessing about missteps we have made, decisions that do not go our way or the belief we have been treated unfairly is energy no longer available to add value in the world.

Truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a way of saying, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’ 

Lying is second nature to him... More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.

The range of what we think and do Is limited by what we fail to notice And because we fail to notice That we fail to notice There is little we can do To change Until we notice How failing to notice Shapes our thoughts and deeds.

It’s not possible to move from one activity to the next at blinding speed and be reflective at the same time. The more complex and demanding the work we do, the wider, deeper and longer the perspective we require to do it well. It’s almost impossible to do that when we create no white space in our lives.

We are already the most overinformed, underreflective people in the history of civilization,” argue Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey,

Is the Life You’re Living Worth the Price You’re Paying to Live It?

While working on The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci regularly took off from painting for several hours at a time and seemed to be daydreaming aimlessly. Urged by his patron, the prior of Santa Maria delle Grazie, to work more continuously, da Vinci is reported to have replied, immodestly but accurately, 'The greatest geniuses accomplish more when they work less.

We arrive home in the evenings with little energy left for our families. We spend too little time thinking strategically and long term, too little time taking care of ourselves, and too little time simply enjoying our lives.

Trump’s election obviously had a very personal meaning for me. I feel unsettled everyday by his words, his behavior, and his corrosive impact on democracy and the rule of law. Trump has had an impact as well on our collective psyche and our nervous systems; supporters and opponents alike. He has modeled, normalized, and appealed to our most primitive instincts: greed, anger, deceit, hatred, defensiveness, blame, and denial. Rather than evolving in office, Trump has devolved, dragging us backward with him. Among the majority of Americans who oppose him, he fuels fear and anxiety, outrage, and despair. Among his supporters, he sanctions rage and hatred. The fight or flight emotions he arouses in supporters and critics alike serve none of us well.

Talking on a cell phone makes us four times as likely to have an accident—the same as a driver who has a blood alcohol content of .08 percent, which qualifies as intoxicated in most states. The risk is equal for drivers holding their phones to their ears and for those speaking through a hands-free device. In both cases, researchers suggest, the drivers generate mental images of the unseen person at the other end of the line, which conflicts with their capacity for spatial processing. “It’s not that your hands aren’t on the wheel,” says David Strayer, the director of the Applied Cognition Laboratory at the University of Utah, “it’s that your mind is not on the road.

Like all Freed musicals and all Astaire musicals, The Band Wagon believes that high and low, art and entertainment, elite and popular aspirations meet in the American musical. The Impressionist originals in Tony’s hotel room, which eventually finance his snappier vision of the show, draw not only a connection to An American in Paris but to painters, like Degas, who found art in entertainers. The ultimate hymn to this belief is the new Dietz and Schwartz song for the film, “That’s Entertainment,” which is to filmusicals what Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business” is to the stage.11 Whether a hot plot teeming with sex, a gay divorcée after her ex, or Oedipus Rex, whether a romantic swain after a queen or “some Shakespearean scene (where a ghost and a prince meet and everything ends in mincemeat),” it’s all one world of American entertainment. “Hip Hooray, the American way.” Dietz’s lyrics echo Mickey’s theorem in Strike Up the Band. What’s American? Exactly this kind of movie musical from Mount Hollywood Art School.

BUILDING RENEWAL INTO YOUR WORKDAY – Tony Schwartz Zeke is a creative director at a large agency. The workday he described when we first met was typical of the managers and leaders I meet in my travels. After six or six and a half hours of sleep—which never felt like enough—Zeke’s alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. each morning. His first move was to take his iPhone off the night table and check his e-mail. He told himself he did this in case something urgent had come in overnight, but the truth was he just couldn’t resist. Zeke tried to get to the gym at least two times a week, but he traveled frequently, and at home he was often just too tired to work out. Once he got to work—around 7:30 a.m. most days—Zeke grabbed a cup of coffee, sat down at his desk, and checked his e-mail again. By then, twenty-five or more new messages were typically waiting in his in-box. If he didn’t have an early meeting, he might be online for an hour or more without once looking up. Zeke’s days were mostly about meetings. They were usually scheduled one after the other with no time in between. As a result, he would race off to the next meeting without digesting what he’d just taken in at the last one. Lunch was something Zeke squeezed in. He usually brought food back to his desk from the cafeteria and worked while he ate. Around two or three in the afternoon, depending on how much sleep he’d gotten the previous night, Zeke began to feel himself fading. Given his company’s culture, taking even a short nap wasn’t an option. Instead, for a quick hit of energy, he found himself succumbing to a piece of someone’s leftover birthday cake, or running to the vending machine for a Snickers bar. With so many urgent demands, Zeke tended to put off any intensive, challenging work for later. By the end of the day, however, he rarely had the energy to get to it. Even so, he found it difficult to leave work with so much unfinished business. By the time he finally did, usually around 7:30 or 8 p.m., he was pretty much running on empty. After dinner, Zeke tried to get to some of the work he had put off earlier in the day. Much of the time, he simply ended up returning to e-mail or playing games online. Either way, he typically stayed up later than he knew he should. How closely does this match your experience? To the extent that it does resonate, how did this happen? Most important, can you imagine working the way you do now for the next ten or twenty years? YOUR CAPACITY IS LIMITED The challenge is that the demand in our lives increasingly exceeds our capacity.

La tarea de un líder es movilizar, concentrar, inspirar y renovar periódicamente la energía de las personas que lidera.

Para las personas que pasan sus vidas ayudando a la gente, el reto es valorar Igualmente sus propias necesidades para renovarse a sí mismas y poder servir a los otros con mayor eficacia

We live in a perilous age. As I write these words, COVID-19 has become a global crisis. Autocrats, including Trump, hold power in a growing number of countries around the world. Democracy and freedom are at greater peril than at any point in decades. The earth is warming at warp speed, and the catastrophic consequences are more evident every day. Despite these warning signs, we are not dramatically changing our habits of consumption or significantly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Income inequality—the gap between the richest and poorest people in the world—is rising at a rate that engenders growing fury among the less privileged.

an ecologist named Garrett Hardin wrote an article titled, The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin’s thesis was that individuals acting in their rational self-interest would use whatever resources are available to them, blithely ignoring the fact that any finite resource eventually runs out, which is disastrous for everyone, including themselves. To illustrate, Harden used the metaphor of the open pasture, the commons as he called it, to which herdsmen bring their cattle to feed. Understandably, the herdsmen seek to feed as many cattle as possible in order to maximize their income and improve their lives. Over time however, the effects of overgrazing take a progressive toll on the commons, eventually rendering it unusable for all herdsmen.

It’s not how much time we invest into our work that determines our productivity but rather the value we produce during the hours we work.

Commuting can take a huge toll on people’s productivity draining their energy during the early-morning hours, when they might otherwise be most effective. Organizations serve their employees and themselves by allowing employees to commute in off-hours or work from home.

In short, we each have one reservoir of will and discipline, and it is depleted by any act of conscious self-regulation—whether that’s resisting a cookie, solving a puzzle, or doing anything else that requires effort. “The

A series of studies has demonstrated that uncontrollable stress of any kind—for example, frustration when trying to deal with a government bureaucracy—leads to breakdowns in other areas in which individuals have been trying to exercise control, such as dieting or smoking. In a similar way, not eating for extended periods, getting too little sleep, or feeling distracted by noise that we can’t control each diminishes people’s self-regulatory reserves. In turn, we become less effective at any given task we undertake. Self

The Art of the Deal. Cowritten with Tony Schwartz—a ghostwriter who later warned during the 2016 campaign that Trump was a sociopath who would likely bring forth the end of the world if elected—The Art of the Deal could have been subtitled How I Became a Russian Asset.36

The first key shift is to stop evaluating performance by the number of hours employees put in and instead measure it by the value they produce. That means not just permitting intermittent renewal but actively encouraging it as a key to sustainable high performance. It also means treating employees like adults by giving them freedom to decide how best to get their work done and holding them accountable for their results, not the hours they work.

All this furious activity exacts a series of silent costs: less capacity for focused attention, less time for any given task, and less opportunity to think reflectively and long term. When we finally do get home at night, we have less energy for our families, less time to wind down and relax, and fewer hours to sleep. We return to work each morning feeling less rested, less than fully engaged, and less able to focus. It’s a vicious cycle that feeds on itself. Even for those who still manage to perform at high levels, there is a cost in overall satisfaction and fulfillment. The ethic of more, bigger, faster generates value that is narrow, shallow, and short term. More and more, paradoxically, leads to less and less.

The real issue is not the number of hours we sit behind a desk but the energy we bring to the work we do and the value we generate as a result. A growing body of research suggests that we’re most productive when we move between periods of high focus and intermittent rest. Instead, we live in a gray zone, constantly juggling activities but rarely fully engaging in any of them—or fully disengaging from any of them. The consequence is that we settle for a pale version of the possible.

It’s that human beings operate most productively in the same one-dimensional way computers do: continuously, at high speeds, for long periods of time, running multiple programs at the same time.

In a significant number of cases, people actually get worse at their jobs over time. “More

The vast majority of organizations fail to make the connection between the degree to which they meet their employees’ needs and how effectively those employees perform.

Do you think your people perform better when they’re healthier and happier?” Almost invariably, the answer is “Yes.” Then we ask one more question: “Does your organization regularly invest in people’s health and happiness?” The answer is nearly always “No.

any strength overused ultimately becomes a liability.

The book’s ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, had done a good job—which he has long since regretted—of making his subject sound coherent, as if Donald had actually espoused a fully realized business philosophy that he understood and lived by.

When we asked what gave him the greatest sense of passion and meaning in his life, he came up empty. He didn't feel much passion at work, he admitted, even though his authority and his stature had increased. He didn't feel much at home, even though it was clear that he loved his wife and children and considered them his highest priorities. The powerful source of energy that can be derived from connecting to a clear sense of purpose simply wasn't available to Roger. Unmoored from deeply held values, he didn't have much motivation to take better care of himself physically, or to control his impatience, or even to prioritize his time and focus his attention. With so much to keep him busy, he spent very little energy reflecting on the choices that he had made. Thinking about his life only made him uncomfortable anyway, since nothing seemed likely to change.

The more powerful our pulse, the more fully engaged we can be. The same is true organizationally. To the degree that leaders and managers build cultures around continuous work—whether that means several-hour meetings, or long days, or the expectation that people will work in the evenings and on weekends—performance is necessarily compromised over time. Cultures that encourage people to seek intermittent renewal not only inspire greater commitment, but also more productivity

TONY SCHWARTZ is the president and CEO of The Energy Project, a company that helps organizations fuel sustainable high performance by better meeting the needs of their employees. Tony’s most recent books, Be Excellent at Anything and The Power of Full Engagement (coauthored with Jim Loehr), were both New York Times bestsellers.

In another study, chronic procrastinators who set a specific time to complete a task were eight times as likely to follow through.

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Lohr and Tony Schwartz.

believing, Jody Hotchkiss (Onward!), David Grossman, Helen Heller, and the tireless Chandler Crawford. I am grateful and indebted to every single person at Riverhead Books. In particular, I want to thank Susan Petersen Kennedy and Geoffrey Kloske for their faith in this story. My heartfelt thanks also go to Marilyn Ducksworth, Mih-Ho Cha, Catharine Lynch, Craig D. Burke, Leslie Schwartz, Honi Werner, and Wendy Pearl. Special thanks to my sharp-eyed copy editor, Tony Davis, who misses nothing, and, lastly, to my talented editor, Sarah McGrath, for her patience, foresight, and guidance. Finally, thank you, Roya.

Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

infidelity

Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter behind Trump’s 1987 hit book The Art of the Deal, was better at it than most. He came up with the phrase “truthful hyperbole” to make Trump’s wayward ways sound harmless and charming. Schwartz, who has come to regret the work he did for Trump, said, “[I]t’s a way of saying, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?

Tony is not the heroin addict; rather, he is a courageous soul who undertook the life challenge of drug addiction to learn self-nurturing.