Josh Kaufman Quotes

Many things aren't fun until you're good at them . Every skill has what I call a frustration barrier, a period of time in which you're horribly unskilled and you're painfully aware of that fact.

Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried. — FRANK TYGER, POLITICAL CARTOONIST AND COLUMNIST I

there’s often a huge difference between an interesting idea and a solid business.

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.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. — HENRY DAVID THOREAU

By making offers Modular, the business can create and improve each offer in isolation, then mix and match offers as necessary to better serve their customers. It’s like playing with LEGOS: once you have a set of pieces to work with, you can put them together in all sorts of interesting ways.

Economic Values that people typically consider when evaluating a potential purchase. They are: 1. Efficacy — How well does it work? 2. Speed — How quickly does it work? 3. Reliability — Can I depend on it to do what I want? 4. Ease of Use — How much effort does it require? 5. Flexibility — How many things does it do? 6. Status — How does this affect the way others perceive me? 7. Aesthetic Appeal — How attractive or otherwise aesthetically pleasing is it? 8. Emotion — How does it make me feel? 9. Cost — How much do I have to give up to get this?

1. Watch — What’s happening? What’s working and what’s not? 2. Ideate — What could you improve? What are your options? 3. Guess — Based on what you’ve learned so far, which of your ideas do you think will make the biggest impact? 4. Which? — Decide which change to make. 5. Act — Actually make the change. 6. Measure — What happened? Was the change positive or negative? Should you keep the change, or go back to how things were before this iteration? Iteration is a cycle —

A Checklist is an Externalized, predefined Standard Operating Procedure for completing a specific task. Creating a Checklist is enormously valuable for two reasons. First, Checklisting will help you define a System for a process that hasn’t yet been formalized — once the Checklist has been created, it’s easier to see how to improve or Automate the system. Second, using Checklists as a normal part of working can help ensure that you don’t forget to handle important steps that are easily overlooked when things get busy.

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.

Fear of the unknown will always be with you, no matter what you do. That’s comforting in a way: if there’s nothing you can do to change it, there’s no reason to let it stop you.

STATE model to communicate without provoking anger or defensiveness: 1. Share your facts — Facts are less controversial, more persuasive, and less insulting than conclusions, so lead with them first. 2. Tell your story — Explain the situation from your point of view, taking care to avoid insulting or judging, which makes the other person feel less safe. 3. Ask for others’ paths — Ask for the other person’s side of the situation, what they intended, and what they want. 4. Talk tentatively — Avoid conclusions, judgments, and ultimatums. 5. Encourage testing — Make suggestions, ask for input, and discuss until you reach a productive and mutually satisfactory course of action.

The moment you make a mistake in pricing, you’re eating into your reputation or your profits. — KATHARINE PAINE, FOUNDER

Ramit Sethi recommends applying what he calls the “85% Solution.” So many people get wrapped up in making the perfect decision that they wind up overwhelming themselves and doing nothing.

In order to find and eliminate a Constraint, Goldratt proposes the “Five Focusing Steps,” a method you can use to improve the Throughput of any System: 1. Identification: examining the system to find the limiting factor. If your automotive assembly line is constantly waiting on engines in order to proceed, engines are your Constraint. 2. Exploitation: ensuring that the resources related to the Constraint aren’t wasted. If the employees responsible for making engines are also building windshields, or stop building engines during lunchtime, exploiting the Constraint would be having the engine employees spend 100 percent of their available time and energy producing engines, and having them work in shifts so breaks can be taken without slowing down production. 3. Subordination: redesigning the entire system to support the Constraint. Let’s assume you’ve done everything you can to get the most out of the engine production system, but you’re still behind. Subordination would be rearranging the factory so everything needed to build the engine is close at hand, instead of requiring certain materials to come from the other end of the factory. Other subsystems may have to move or lose resources, but that’s not a huge deal, since they’re not the Constraint. 4. Elevation: permanently increasing the capacity of the Constraint. In the case of the factory, elevation would be buying another engine-making machine and hiring more workers to operate it. Elevation is very effective, but it’s expensive — you don’t want to spend millions on more equipment if you don’t have to. That’s why Exploitation and Subordination come first: you can often alleviate a Constraint quickly, without resorting to spending more money. 5. Reevaluation: after making a change, reevaluating the system to see where the Constraint is located. Inertia is your enemy: don’t assume engines will always be the Constraint: once you make a few Changes, the limiting factor might become windshields. In that case, it doesn