It will take you less time and effort to do a thing the difficult way than it will to buy, try and discard all the shortcuts.
Effort is its own reward if you allow it to be.
Those that spend the most effort in search of shortcuts are often the most disappointed and the least successful.
Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths... whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it's over
My new favorite word is 'awkward.'...Th e reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn't be worth the effort.
Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.
Marketing is the act of inventing the product. The effort of designing it. The craft of producing it. The art of pricing it. The technique of selling it.
No one can be responsible for where or how we each begin. No one has the freedom to do anything or everything, and all choices bring consequences. What we choose to do next, though, how to spend our resources or attention or effort, this is what defines us.