Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.

Perfect can't possibly be the goal, we're left with generous, important and human instead.

Human beings, thanks to culture and genetics, are inclined to be pessimistic, fearful, skeptical and believers in conspiracy theories. We also don't like change.

I look at Starbucks, Howard Schultz has made many brilliant decisions, and one of the things that they did was they invented the third space. It's not work, it's not home. That's one of the engines of its spread. But at the same time he was doing that, he bet the farm to open more and more stores in any given town, and making it ubiquitous made it much easier to say to your friend, I'll meet you at Starbucks.

The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified... and pick yourself.

The opportunity is not in being momentarily popular with the anonymous masses. It's in being missed when you're gone, in doing work that matters to the tribe you choose.

Faced with the opportunity to become the category of one, we almost always hesitate, almost always compromise, almost always dumb it down to play it a little bit safer