Most of us don't work out what we want. And most of us end up with lopsided lives as a result.

Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many.

What could you achieve that would make you proud, that no one else could do with the same ease?

To get useful new ideas, we must go beyond our immediate circle and make contact with distant parts of the social system.

The road to hell is paved with the pursuit of volume. Volume leads to marginal products, marginal customers, and greatly increased managerial complexity.

Conventional wisdom is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. 80/20 wisdom is to choose a basket carefully, load all your eggs into it, and then watch it like a hawk.

There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 per cent of our time.... The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20% of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 per cent more than now.