Quotes for entrepreneurs curated in August 2024 on a theme of “Do It Now–sometimes later never comes.”
Quotes For Entrepreneurs Curated in August 2024
My theme for this month’s “Quotes for Entrepreneurs” is “Do It Now-sometimes later never comes.”
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“To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.”
John W. Gardner
I originally curated this in October 2016 but felt it was a direct hit for this month’s theme.
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Sometimes Later becomes Never – DO IT NOW” –Author unknown.
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“The only easy day was yesterday.”
Navy SEAL training motto
If you are a founder and find yourself facing an easy decision it’s likely a marker for a lack of appropriate delegation or an unwillingness to confront hard challenges.
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“A wicked problem cannot be fully defined until it is at least partially solved.”
Steve McConnell
h/t Kimsia Sim. Managing a complex situation requires careful observation, collecting multiple perspectives, experimentation, and iterative approaches that involve small bets entailing affordable losses.
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“You can’t build the future if you’re living in yesterday. Cultural doom loops are driven by leaders and decision-makers who can’t break out of the past. So they keep doing the same things over and over. But the old techniques don’t work anymore and each repetition adds to the degradation from the original role model.”
Ted Gioia “How to Tell if You are Living in a Doom Loop.“
The fastest decision is to continue doing what has worked in the past. However, you risk avoiding the adjustments necessary to identify and exploit new opportunities as traditional approaches decline in value.
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- Do Something. You know you have to. Why delay?
- Do Something Small. That gets you started and makes something to build on.
- Do Something Small, but Useful. Be sure it’s pertinent and helps to solve the problem.
- Do Something Small, but Useful Now.
from “Action and Attitude can Conquer Y2K” by Bob Bemer. I used this as the basis for “Do Something Small, But Useful Now. ”
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“Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.”
Albert Camus, The Fall (1956)
Also originally curated in October 2016.
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“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”
Book of common prayer Morning Prayer General Confession 1662
A common feeling I have at the end of the week, Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, birthdays, and other times when I am moved to reflect on what I have done and left undone.I blogged about it in “By Sunday night your chips are down for the week.” The only real remedy for worry, indecision, procrastination, and perfectionism (four sides of the same tetrahedral die) is action.
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Tomorrow do thy worst, I have lived today.
John Dryden
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“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”
Pearl S. Buck in “Not Quite Too Late” (1943) collected as chapter 10 in “What America Means to Me” (1943)
I don’t always know when to second guess myself and when to “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” If you hit the brakes once when your car is in the air, they have no effect. You have to commit at some point, preferably after as much careful thought as circumstances permit.
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“Wisdom is knowing what to do next;
Skill is knowing how to do it, and
Virtue is doing it.”
David Starr Jordan in “American University Tendencies” (23 Mar 1903)
h/t Science Quotes; also collected in “Thoughts of our Favorite Authors” by Jessie K. Freeman and Sarah S. B. Yule (1901). a variant, “Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it,” appears in his “Philosophy of Despair” (1902).
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“Organization and good planning are just crutches for those who can’t handle stress and caffeine.”
Evan Steeg
I used curated this originally in Sep-2010
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“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”
Bob Dylan “All along the watchtower“
I used this as the closing quote for “By Sunday night your chips are down for the week.”
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“We procrastinate when we have forgotten who we are.”
Merlin Mann in “Inbox Zero Notes” (see also InboxZero)
I curated this in Sep-2009 and also used it in “Eleven Tips from Lynnea Hagen on Getting Unstuck”
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If we hold back shipping because it isn’t perfect, we’re hiding. If it doesn’t ship, it doesn’t count.
Work is to establish a standard for “good enough” and ship when you meet it.
Seth Godin in “Mediocrity and Perfectionism” (condensed excerpt).
I blogged about this back in 2008 with Better is the Enemy of “Good Enough”, noting that, “Perfectionists get this wrong, siding with “Better.” Entrepreneurs who prosper, for the most part, side with “Good Enough” and keep improving.”
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“Waste anything but time. Time is the one thing we do not have.”
From When Worlds Collide
I originally used this in my July 2010 roundup.
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“By the street of By-and-By, one arrives at the house of Never.”
Miguel de Cervantes
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“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.”
Bill Widener
h/t Garson O’Toole; originally curated in June 2011
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“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish”
J. R. R. Tolkien “Fellowship of the Ring”
Samwise Gamgee quotes his father to Frodo in the chapter “The Mirror of Galadriel.”
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“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”
Victor Hugo
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“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”
Peter F. Drucker
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“When you hear that a method is optimal, ask ‘By what criteria?’ and ‘Subject to what constraints?'”
John D. Cook
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“Before you ask yourself whether you are working hard enough, ask yourself whether you are working on the right problem.”
Orange Book (@orangebook_)
This reminds me of
“We’re still lost, but we’re making very good time!”
Buddy Blattner
Although commonly ascribed to Yogi Berra, who included it in his “The Yogi Book,” Garson O’Toole traces it to a 1947 single panel cartoon in Colliers Weekly by George Lichty (punchline by Buddy Blattner) about an airline pilot addressing his passengers.
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“Lost time is never found again.”
Benjamin Franklin
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“Lose the day loitering,’twill be the same story
To-morrow, and the next more dilatory,
For indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute!
What you can do, or think you can, begin it!
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;
Begin it, and the work will be completed.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
h/t All Poetry I used a different translation of this passage found in W. H. Murray’s 1951 book, “The Scottish Himalayan Expedition” as a point of departure in “Burn Your Boats, Not Your Bridges.” There is obviously value in taking time off to relax and recharge. I blogged about the value of relaxing in Entrepreneurship is a Marathon, Change Your Pace to Recharge and the importance of periodic reflection in Record to Remember, Pause to Reflect.
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“Situations in life often permit no delay; and when we cannot determine the course which is certainly best, we must follow the one which is probably the best. This frame of mind freed me also from the repentance and remorse commonly felt by those vacillating individuals who are always seeking as worthwhile things which they later judge to be bad.”
Rene Descartes
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“It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of fate, and see how our destinies turn on a minute’s delay or advance…”
William Makepeace Thackeray in “Catherine” [Gutenberg]
Most people stop the quote here, the full sentence loses some of the pungency of the truncated version:
“It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of FATE, and see how our destinies turn on a minute’s delay or advance, or on the turning of a street, or on somebody else’s turning of a street, or on somebody else’s doing of something else in Downing Street or in Timbuctoo, now or a thousand years ago.”
William Makepeace Thackeray in “Catherine” [Gutenberg]
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“Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.”
Samuel Johnson in “The Idler” No. 43. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1759.
Also collected in “Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler”
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“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”
Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Final Problem” (collected in “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes“)
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“It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.”
C.S. Lewis in “Screwtape Proposes a Toast“
Originally published Dec-19-1959 in the Saturday Evening Post, it’s included in later editions of “Screwtape Letters.”
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“It is equally fallacious to undertake a development without estimating its performance in the light of conditions that will apply when it actually gets into use, allowing for development in other lines in the meantime.”
Vannevar Bush in “Modern Arms and Free Men“
I used this in Vannevar Bush on “Modern Arms and Free Men.” You cannot assume your competition will stand still as you develop, test, and deploy your new offering. Furthermore, you have to anticipate how they will react to it in ways that may neutralize the competitive advantage you hope to gain.
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“Productivity is the deliberate, strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources, and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals.”
Dan S. Kennedy in “No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs (2013)
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“There are two kinds of decisions: those that are expensive to change and those that are not. The common or garden-variety decision should be made fast.”
Robert Townsend in “Up the Organization” chapter on “Decisions”
I used this quote in”Combine Clear Goals with Delegation Based on Expertise for High Impact.” I observed: “This is one chapter I wish Townsend had gone into more detail on. The size of a decision is the amount of resources irrevocably committed and decisions fall into a broad spectrum from what color coffee cups to buy for the cafeteria to where to site a new factory or what major new product to develop and launch. If no significant information can be gained by waiting or from further analysis then it certainly makes sense to make decisions as quickly as possible as many opportunities are fleeting. If you treat even “mid-size” decisions as probes you remain alert to the possibility of being wrong in the same way a toddler learns to walk on uncertain terrain, slowly shifting all of their weight to where they have planted their forward foot to make sure they won’t lose footing. I think what Townsend is really arguing against is dithering, where fear of being wrong leads to a paralysis worse than any failure from making a choice and moving forward.”
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This month, I focused on the need to “do it now.” But it depends on the context: is the opportunity still ripening, or is it starting to rot? If you risk losing the moment, then fast action is warranted. Or is it not yet the right moment? The Greeks distinguished between these two situations, using kairos for the right moment, and chronos for sequential time, which was not to be wasted. Sometimes, later is better: you can assess the situation in the cold light of day instead of the heat of the moment, you can see the results of earlier efforts and experiments before you double down on approaches that may not be working. I addressed the value of patience in Planting Trees: Finite and Infinite Entrepreneurship.