Quotes about Effort

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it. -

Mediocre is merely a failed attempt to be really good.

The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that's actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.

If you never fail, either you're really lucky or you haven't shipped anything.

You can't really decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you're lucky, your work will find an audience for whom it's meaningful.

Emotional labor is the task of doing important work, even when it isn't easy. Emotional

Alas, there isn't a pain-free way to achieve your goals.

As Susan Kare, designer of the original Mac interface, said, "You can't really decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you're lucky, your work will find an audience for whom it's meaningful.

Perfect closes the door. It asserts that we're done, that this is the best we can do. Worse, perfect forbids us to try. To seek perfection and not reach it is a failure.

We worry that we're not in the right emotional moment to do our work. And mostly, we give away our agency, begging someone, anyone, to do the hard part of summoning the muse or getting us approval or a gig or support so that we can maybe, just maybe, feel the light again. It's a trap. Flow is the result of effort. The muse shows up when we do the work. Not the other way around. Set up your tools, turn off the internet, and go back to work.

The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration.

Anything in life worth working for, is worth praying for.