Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from.
Change almost never fails because it's too early. It almost always fails because it's too late.
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance.
If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.
An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.
The secret to being wrong isn't to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn't fatal.
People don't believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.
If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.
How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?
Perhaps your challenge isn't finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.
The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.
At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.
Soon is not as good as now.
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.” Siddhrtha Gautama
In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn't necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.
Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you'll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job.
Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.
Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.
Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do.
Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.
How was your day? If your answer was "fine," then I don't think you were leading.
The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.
If failure is not an option, then neither is success.
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.
Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers.
The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.
The Cul-de-Sac ( French for "dead end" ) ... is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes
Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you've got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don't start, you never get a chance.
Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can't see it
You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.
Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.
Everyone will think it's stupid!" "Everyone says it's impossible." Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong.
The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin.
Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.
We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.
The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don't know.
I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.
Believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.
No one knows more about the way you think than you do.
We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.
Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations
...the greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.
The time to look for a new job is when you don't need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable.
What is school for? If you're not asking that, you're wasting time and money.
The best way to be missed when you're gone, Is to stand for something when you're here
An individual artist needs only a thousand true fans in her tribe. It's enough.
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we've missed the point.
The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value
If you don't know how it works, find out. If you're not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn't make sense, play with it until it does. If it's not broken, break it. If it might not be true, find out.
If you can't be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.
 conclusion. )
Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.
A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.
You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.
 to shut up. )
Tell your lizard (brain) to shut up.
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.
A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.
Quite or be exceptional. Average is for losers.
Art has no right answer. The best we can hope for is an interesting answer.
One of the things that school is for is to teach our children to understand and relish the idea of intellectualism, to develop into something more than a purpose-driven tool for the industrial state.
The market ... demands a signal from you that you're serious, powerful, accepted, and safe.
You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.
Leadership isn't something that people hand to you. ... [i]t's a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that's something we can teach.
It's clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them. ~ Seth Godin
 structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us. )
The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.
Passion can overcome fear - the fear of losing, of failing, of being traditional.
Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources
Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt
Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.
That's your opportunity--to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.
Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.
Creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, and both of them require the posture of the artist.
The challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us.
The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.
Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. That would be you.
Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy.
So sure, start with a slogan. But don't bother wasting any time on it if you're merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.
 security. )
The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.
When your art fails, make better art.
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice.
Our culture works hard to prevent change.
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck. So the question is: Have you ever done that?
Group projects are the exception in school, but they should be the norm.
The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of
Once you’ve engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them.
This is an addictive pastime. You take no real risk, touch the world, and it responds. Repeat.
Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.
Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.
Marketing is the name we use to describe the promise a company makes, the story it tells, the authentic way it delivers on that promise.
The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there. Ironically, it’s those who seek out discomfort that are able to make a difference and find their footing.
The only way to get what you're worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you've already figured out, demands initiative.
The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.
For many of us, the happiest future is one that's precisely like the past, except a little better
Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn't an artist, he was a plumber.
