Josh Kaufman Quotes

If you only have an hour or two each day to devote to practice and learning, and you spread that time and energy across twenty different skills, no individual skill is going to receive enough time and energy to generate noticeable improvement.

Before you engage, you won’t know the outcome of the struggle. You may win the day easily, with barely a scratch. You may prevail, after much effort and after earning a few battle scars. You may fall, never to rise again. There may be treasure in the back of the cave, enough to live on in splendor for the rest of your days. There may be nothing. You may win glory and renown, or be considered a fool, worse off than you were before. This is the essence of life. The outcome of your actions and decisions is unknown and unknowable. What separates the adventurer from the bulk of humanity is the willingness to fight in spite of the risks: to meet the enemy on the field of valor, trusting in skill, instinct, and determination to see them through to a good end. There are no certainties and no guarantees. The hero fights anyway.

Find the inputs that produce the outputs you want, then make them the focus of most of your time and energy. Eliminate the rest.

Learn everything you can from your competition and then create something even more valuable.

All of us have had the experience of knowing or feeling that we should do something or that an action would be in our best interest … but we don’t do it. The term for that experience is Akrasia (pronounced “ah-KRAH-see-ah”).

The most well-known general method of rapid skill acquisition is immersion: completely changing your environment in a way that results in constant deliberate practice.

Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good.

Choose a lovable project. 2. Focus your energy on one skill at a time. 3. Define your target performance level. 4. Deconstruct the skill into subskills. 5. Obtain critical tools. 6. Eliminate barriers to practice. 7. Make dedicated time for practice. 8. Create fast feedback loops. 9. Practice by the clock in short bursts. 10. Emphasize quantity and speed.

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.

raising your prices can increase demand by appealing to a more attractive type of customer. Automobiles are a classic example of this type of price sensitivity: some cars are desirable because they’re expensive. The typical customer who purchases a Bentley Continental GT is very different from the type of customer who purchases a Toyota Camry.

At the core, all successful businesses sell some combination of money, status, power, love, knowledge, protection, pleasure, and excitement. The more clearly you articulate how your product satisfies one or more of these drives, the more attractive your offer will become.

Focus on creating Forms of Value that require the least end-user effort to get the best possible End Result — they will have the highest perceived value.

People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy. — JEFFREY GITOMER, AUTHOR

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.