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.”
― Tony Schwartz

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz

“Watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz

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

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys To Transforming the Way We Work and Live

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, Dealing with The Devil, My Mother, Trump and Me

“We are already the most overinformed, underreflective people in the history of civilization,” argue Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey,”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“Is the Life You’re Living Worth the Price You’re Paying to Live It?”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys To Transforming the Way We Work and Live

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“In a significant number of cases, people actually get worse at their jobs over time. “More”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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”
― Tony Schwartz, La Anti-productividad: Así como estamos funcionando no está funcionando

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, Dealing with The Devil, My Mother, Trump and Me

“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”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“In another study, chronic procrastinators who set a specific time to complete a task were eight times as likely to follow through.”
― Tony Schwartz, Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys To Transforming the Way We Work and Live

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

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

“any strength overused ultimately becomes a liability.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, Dealing with The Devil, My Mother, Trump and Me

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working

“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.”
― Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working