long, slow, tough work

I’ll tell you what leadership is. It’s persuasion and conciliation and education and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know.

 

Dwight G. Eisenhower

MATTIS, J. (2019). CALL SIGN CHAOS: Learning to lead. S.l.: RANDOM HOUSE. 19

too much to do

There will always be too much to do – and this realization is liberating. Today more than ever, there’s just no reason to assume any fit between the demands on your time – all the things you would like to do, or feel you ought to do – and the amount of time available. Thanks to capitalism, technology and human ambition, these demands keep increasing, while your capacities remain largely fixed. It follows that the attempt to “get on top of everything” is doomed. (Indeed, it’s worse than that – the more tasks you get done, the more you’ll generate.)

The upside is that you needn’t berate yourself for failing to do it all, since doing it all is structurally impossible. The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favor of what matters most.

Oliver Burkeman

"Oliver Burkeman's last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life" The Guardian. 9/4/2020

abundance and lack of abundance

Both abundance and lack [of abundance] exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend … when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us [happiness]—the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth. 

Sarah Ban Breathnach

John Cook, comp., The Book of Positive Quotations, 2nd ed. (2007), 342, as quoted in Thomas S. Monson, “Finding Joy in the Journey,” Ensign, Nov 2008, 84–87

purpose is the guardrail for actions

Purpose is the guardrail for actions. Change agility requires an answer to the question “Why?”, so that people can fight the natural instinct to resist change. The answer needs to tap into what’s meaningful and important, providing an irresistible invitation to come along. As CEO Shoei Yamana of Konica Minolta has said, “My belief is that people don’t work for numbers…they need to share the same belief that they are creating value in some way.” If you can’t articulate a clear purpose behind the changes being made, it’s unlikely that your employees will be able to implement them.

Edith Onderick-Harvey

5 Behaviors of Leaders Who Embrace Change. Harvard Business Review. May 18, 2018

if the Lord spares me

If at the end of practice I said to (my boxing coach) Earl Blair  , "See you tomorrow," he'd say, "See you tomorrow, if the Lord spares me." If I dropped him off at his house and said, "I'll see you Monday," he'd say, "See you Monday, if the Lord spares me."

Every time a plan was made, Earl would say, "If the Lord spares me." If you asked him about this, he'd tell you that it was, in part, a way of being respectful to God: "My Father owns every second, and he'll take me when he wants to."

It was also a way of practicing death - of reminding yourself and others around you that your time is limited.

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.271