“System innovations almost always involve rejecting the standard metrics as a first step in making a difference. When you measure the same metrics, you’re likely to create the same outcomes. But if you can see past the metrics to the results, it’s possible to change the status quo.”
– Seth Godin
Rejecting Standard Metrics
Change
“Have the wisdom to know what cannot be changed, and the strength to change what can.”
– Epictetus
(via)
Insecurity
“It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.”
― Anaïs Nin
Life
“Life can disappear on us just like a cup of coffee consumed on autopilot. In other words, to really experience life itself, as opposed to just more thinking about life, we need to remember we’re having an experience.”
Build A Ship
“If you want to build a ship, dont drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast endless sea.”
– Antoine De Saint-Exupery
(via)
Minimalism
“Minimalism is not the lack of something. It is simply the perfect amount of something.”
— Najahyia Chinchilla
From this this CreativeMornings talk
Life
“Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.”
When Things Fall Apart: Tibetan Buddhist Nun and Teacher Pema Chödrön on Transformation Through Difficult Times
Your Three Feet of Influence
“We can be the kind of people who lead with their hearts and behave to those around them in an ethical, honest, and kindly manner that creates for those who enter that three feet around us a feeling of peace that also serves to steady the self.”
Your Three Feet of Influence, by Sharon Salzberg.
Choosing Profit
“Having a profitable business doesn’t mean squeezing the lemon for every last bitter drop. It isn’t all or nothing. You can be profitable and generous. Profitable and fair. Profitable and kind. These aren’t opposite ends of some moral spectrum. Quite the contrary.”
Why we choose profit, by Jason Fried
Storm
“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
– Haruki Murakami
John Maeda’s 4 Rules
1. Don’t speak ill of others.
2. Avoid passive aggressive behavior.
3. Listen broadly, but don’t waffle on decisions.
4. When in error — admit, apologize, move forward.
– John Maeda
Read some of John Maeda’s explanations on his Four Rules
Elephant
Told to me by a friend from India, “If you come upon an elephant, walk around it.”
— John Maeda (@johnmaeda) July 10, 2017
Love All
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
– William Shakespeare
As Soon As I Saw You….
“As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen!”
– Winnie The Pooh
Phones
“We are addicted to our phones not because we rely on them, but to the extent that we recruit them to a harmful project of self-avoidance. They do not mean to hurt us. But we may – and probably do – use them to injure ourselves. Addiction sounds horrible. But it is a hard name for a normal inclination: a habit of running away from the joys and terrors of self-knowledge.”
Enough
“The longest lived businesses in the world aren’t the ones that were biggest in their day. Many of them are family firms, or small to mid-sized enterprises content with steady evolvement of their niche. Content with enough.”
Enough by DHH
The Habit Of Reading
“To acquire the habit of reading is to create for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life.”
– W. Somerset Maugham
(Available as a print, here.)
circumstances
where
you are.
is not
who
you are.
– circumstances
(via)
This Article
“I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.”
I just kept nodding my head in agreement while reading this article by Kayla Chadwick.
Discipline
“The discipline involved in finishing a piece of creative work is something on which you can truly pride yourself.”
– J.K. Rowling
(via)
Kind Words
“One kind word can warm three winter months.”
– Japanese Proverb
(via)
Creative
“If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert