clear.your.mind

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This post is a little bit old but it’s worth it. It was on WorkHappy, a highly recommended site. Seth Godin wrote about the top five mistakes entrepreneurs make when they start on business, and gosh he is right! here are two of them:

Expecting gratitude in exchange for having done something that was hard. Yes, you built a company, you might even have bootstrapped it. Yes, you’ve got the machinery and the packaging and the retail space. Yes, you’ve navigated hiring people and yes, you finally shipped. I couldn’t care less. I’m not going to buy your brownie/consulting/services just because you worked hard on it.

Failure to measure. All this is worthless if you don’t test and measure relentlessly. Do what works. Kill what doesn’t. Repeat.

Related Links:

• Work Happy: Five Mistakes of Entrepreneurs

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Winston Churchill, 30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965

Related Links:
Works by Winston Churchill at Project Gutenberg
Audio of Churchill’s “finest hour” speech
Churchill and Zionism by Dr. Yoav Tenenbaum, Tel Aviv University

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.

Albert Einstein, March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955

Related Links:
Albert Einstein in Wikipedia
Works, by Albert Einstein at Project Gutenberg
Time Magazine: Profile, Albert Einstein
The removed brain of Albert Einstein after he was dead (of course)