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In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.
“Putting it off as a way of life is one technique that you can use to avoid doing. A non-doer is very often a critic, that is, someone who sits back and watches doers, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It is easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk and change.”
― Your Erroneous Zones
― Your Erroneous Zones
“In a Nutshell - Six Ways To Make People Like You • Principle 1 - Become genuinely interested in other people. • Principle 2 - Smile. • Principle 3 - Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. • Principle 4 - Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. • Principle 5 - Talk in terms of the other person's interests. • Principle 6 - Make the other person feel important-and do it sincerely.”
― How to Win Friends & Influence People
― How to Win Friends & Influence People
“Rather than helping children to think for themselves, solve their own problems and develop trust in themselves, parents tend to treat children as possessions.”
― Your Erroneous Zones
― Your Erroneous Zones
“In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.”
― Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
― Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
“Mrs. E. K. Shields, of Saginaw, Michigan, was driven to despair—even to the brink of suicide—before she learned to live just till bedtime. “In 1937, I lost my husband,” Mrs. Shields said as she told me her story. “I was very depressed—and almost penniless. I wrote my former employer, Mr. Leon Roach, of the Roach-Fowler Company of Kansas City, and got my old job back. I had formerly made my living selling World Books to rural and town school boards. I had sold my car two years previously when my husband became ill; but I managed to scrape together enough money to put a down payment on a used car and started out to sell books again. “I had thought that getting back on the road would help relieve my depression; but driving alone and eating alone was almost more than I could take. Some of the territory was not very productive, and I found it hard to make those car payments, small as they were. “In the spring of 1938, I was working out of Versailles, Missouri. The schools were poor, the roads bad; I was so lonely and discouraged that at one time I even considered suicide. It seemed that success was impossible. I had nothing to live for. I dreaded getting up each morning and facing life. I was afraid of everything: afraid I could not meet the car payments; afraid I could not pay my room rent; afraid I would not have enough to eat. I was afraid my health was failing and I had no money for a doctor. All that kept me from suicide were the thoughts that my sister would be deeply grieved, and that I did not have enough money to pay my funeral expenses. “Then one day I read an article that lifted me out of my despondence and gave me the courage to go on living. I shall never cease to be grateful for one inspiring sentence in that article. It said: ‘Every day is a new life to a wise man.’ I typed that sentence out and pasted it on the windshield of my car, where I saw it every minute I was driving. I found it wasn’t so hard to live only one day at a time. I learned to forget the yesterdays and to not think of the tomorrows. Each morning I said to myself, ‘Today is a new life.”
― How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
― How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
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