Learning is not the same as education, and busy is not the same as productive.

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.

When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.

We’ve had people who were yoga instructors. … We have a former marine, and we have everything in between,

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.

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

A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.So the question is: Have you ever done that?

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A...

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge,...

Soon is not as good as now.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt

The most popular TV show in America is a game show, … People have been playing our games for years and are playing more and more games. The relationship they build is similar to a...

Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.

Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend...

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.

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...

One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has...

Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message...

Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.

If a lens makes a penny or a nickel or a dime a day, it doesn’t seem like much until there’s a million of them.

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…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.

How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to...

Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new…If you fear special requests, if you...

Great design = getting people to do what you want.

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.

No one knows more about the way you think than you do.

Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed consumer will refuse,

How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?

One thing that most comic artists avoid is showing decisions. They show action, sure, and they show results, but they don’t show (because it’s difficult to show) the hero or the villain making a choice.

The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice.

If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.

Don’t be different just to be different. Be different to be better.

When access to information was limited, we needed to load student sup with facts. Now, when we have no scarcity of facts or the access to them, we need to load them up with understanding.

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.” Siddhrtha Gautama

What Wonder understood, that Otto did not, is that if your idea spreads, you win,

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.

try.” If there’s no clear right answer, perhaps the thing you ought to do is something new. Something new is often the right path when the world is complicated.

…treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A...

Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.

The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It...

believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn’t work,

It’s all a risk. Always. That’s not true, actually. The only exception: it’s a certainty that there’s risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That’s because the...

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.

Do extremely difficult work.That seems obvious, right? If you do something that’s valued but scarce because it’s difficult, you’re more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do.The implication...

If you’re remarkable it’s likely that some people won’t like you.

Every single important thing we do is something we didn’t use to be good at, and in fact, might be something we used to fear.

All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and...

Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t,