adopting mentors

True focus is not learning how to schedule your tasks and organize your calender – it’s about triggering a desired result. A very simple way to start and remain in action is by reverse engineering your process. Start with your desired result and work backwards to uncover how it is you will get there. 

In his book Focus, Leo Babauta divides all work-related activities into three categories: Creating, Connecting and Consuming. Connecting involves activities like responding to emails, tweeting and social media, replying to comments, etc. Consuming is any activity that involves research, absorbing, learning. This could mean reading books, blogs, watching movies, listening to podcasts, and so on. Connecting and Consumption activities can be combined, but should never be combined with Creating. 

You don't need a life plan. You don't need motivation, self-confidence, peer support or even luck. All you need is the willingness to take the most obvious step - then repeat the process again and again, regardless of how you feel. Try it. Happiness comes from seeing the results of your efforts. You don't need it before you start.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

You can have your excuses or you can have your dreams. But you can’t have both.

You wouldn’t judge a bee for leaving the flower, after it gets the nectar, would you? Of course not. It got what it came for, why on earth would it stick around? 

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.

Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.