A common mistake people make when trying to design something foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
- Douglas Adams, author, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

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"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Calvin and Hobbes/Bill Waterson)

Planning
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"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Calvin and Hobbes/Bill Waterson)

Use it or lose it. I'm using what's left of my mind and I enjoy it very much and it seems to keep my mind productive.
-- Buddy Ebsen

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"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Calvin and Hobbes/Bill Waterson)

The poet Billy Collins wrote this line, which could be a motto for GTD...

"The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper."

On reading the Harry Potter series to my kids, I stumbled across this item. It's in relation to a "Pensieve" -- a magical basin for storing thoughts...

I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind. [...] At these times [...] I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.

Dumbledore to Harry, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I started making notes in my planner when I run across quotes I like or books that catch my attention - sortof a short, running commentary on where my head is on any given day. Yesterday these two caught my attention:

"We are what and where we are because we first imagined it." - Donald Curtis

"Eagles may soar but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines." - unknown

Hmm...wonder what it says about my state of mind when THOSE two statements are the relevant ones for the day??

Pam

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

-- Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Author

My favorite comes from Neil Fiore's book The Now Habit...

"Keep starting and the finishing will take care of itself."

This is a good reminder as I am currently procrastinating by looking at my favorite websites!

Rambling around http://thinkexist.com I stumbled on a few gems. Not researched, but they must be true 'cause I found 'em on the Internet!

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”
-- Albert Einstein

"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”
-- Dale Carnegie

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans”
-- John Lennon

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.”
-- Daniel H. Burnham

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”
-- Isaac Asimov

“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly”
-- Isaac Asimov

We are what we repeatly do. Excellance then is not an act, but a habit

From Aristotle (who in addition to being the father of biology could be, with necomian ethics, the father of self-help)

"The ancestor of every action is a thought"

Emerson

"Men are born to succeed, not to fail."

Henry David Thoreau

"When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece."

John Ruskin

my artwork | my blog

I'll have to dig up the attribution, but here's one of my faves:

Don't be a sheep. People hate sheep. People eat sheep.

:D

From one of my all time favorite movies:

"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life".

--Dean Wermer, from the movie "Animal House"

I have all my wisdom teeth, two up top, two beneath. Yet, sometimes I realize, my mouth says things that aren't so wise.

Brad Roberts/Crash Test Dummies

Too true.

Reese
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I never finish anyth

"A house without a bathroom is very uncanny."

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I had originally encountered only the first half of this quote in an abridged form (Cconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds) and it never made sense. It was only recently that I rediscovered the whole quote. It makes so much more sense.

Too many times I have encountered the "But that's the way we always do it" mentality. I call it Bureaucratic Inertia.

If I am going to be consistent about something, I'm going to have a dang good and well thought-out reason for it.
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"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Calvin and Hobbes/Bill Waterson)

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

-- Theodore Roosevelt
26th U.S. President

TipsOfAllSorts.com
Tips on Almost Anything Possible!

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people; those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.

Indra Gandi
Former Indian PM

TipsOfAllSorts.com
Tips on Almost Anything Possible!

"The one that claims that it cannot be done should not interrupt the one who is doing it."
-unknown

"Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you."
- Terry Pratchett

Perhaps most dangerously, "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."
- Rodin

"A capsule of human 'progress': by the time you learn how to do it, it's too late. (But often it turns out that what you have learned applies to some new problem. Or we would still be swinging from trees.)"
- L. Long (R. A. Heinlen character)

I don't know who first said it, but E says in the film The Incredibles:

Luck favors the prepared.

-Edna Mode, The Incredibles

-Jon

Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things

This is my first reading of "First Things First" and I like what I am reading so far.
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"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Calvin and Hobbes/Bill Waterson)

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
Friedrich Nietzsche

One of my favorites. And I always thought it was a Marine Corp saying.

Sometimes kids have difficulty putting the brakes on their mouths. I am always saying to my kids;

"Wisdom is knowing what not to say."
Unknown

(Yes, Ygor, I tried google.)

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I am but a simple caveman.

"But, as ever, if you’re fussing and thinking and fiddling and wondering about this stuff, you aren’t doing it, and dammit, that’s what this is all about. Turn messages and papers and notes and ideas into actual or potential actions as quickly and efficiently as possibly, then just retire the digital or physical corpse to the archive graveyard (or, better yet, just pitch it). Doing too much else is a recipe for procrastination and inaction."

Merlin Mann of 43 FOlders

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I am but a simple caveman.

44th Rule of Acquisition: Never confuse wisdom with luck.

"What you don't know may not hurt you, but what you don't remember always does."

-Gerald M. Weinberg

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I am but a simple caveman.