“For my entire career, I have been absolutely relentless. I’ve been committed to a work ethic of uncompromising intensity. And the secret to my success is as boring as it is unsurprising: You show up and you lay another brick. Pissed off? Lay another brick. Bad opening weekend? Lay another brick. Album sales dropping? Get up and lay another brick. Marriage failing? Lay another brick.”
Will Smith, Will (Page ix)
Work Ethic Quotes
“Look for situations where the energy is already flowing downhill. Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect. Create products that tap into a desire people already have. Work on projects that play to your strengths. And then, once the potential of the situation is already working for you, add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft. Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back. The idea is to sprint downhill, not grind uphill.”
James Clear, Blog
“If you want to do your duty properly, you should do just a little more than that.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 117)
Adam Sandler’s Speech from Hustle [2022] “Never Back Down”
Excerpt: Adam Sandler’s speech from Hustle [2022] is one of the all-time great motivational speeches played in a sports movie. Read/ watch it here…
Read More »Adam Sandler’s Speech from Hustle [2022] “Never Back Down”
“When it just doesn’t make any logical sense to go on, that’s when you use your emotion, your anger, your frustration, your fear, to push further, to push you to say one thing: I don’t stop. When your feelings are screaming that you have had enough, when you think you are going to break emotionally, override that emotion with concrete logic and willpower that says one thing: I don’t stop. Fight weak emotions with the power of logic; fight the weakness of logic with the power of emotion.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 23)
“Work is necessary. If you want a good disposition of your spirit, work until you become tired. But not too much. Not until you become exhausted. A good spiritual disposition can be destroyed by excessive work as well as by idleness.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 131)
“You don’t need a better computer to become a writer. You don’t need a better guitar to become a musician. You don’t need a better camera to become a photographer. What you need is to get to work.”
James Clear, Blog
“Patience is a competitive advantage. In a surprising number of fields, you can find success if you are simply willing to do the reasonable thing longer than most people.”
James Clear, Blog
“I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics — New York critics as a rule — who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.”
Maya Angelou, The Paris Review Interviews: Volume IV
“All of us who do creative work… you get into this thing, and there’s like a ‘gap.’ What you’re making isn’t so good, okay?… It’s trying to be good but… it’s just not that great. The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that’s the hardest phase.”
Ira Glass, via So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Page 47)
“If you run a marathon, you’re going to get tired. It would make no sense to hire a coach and say, ‘I want you to help me train so I don’t get tired when I run a marathon.’ The only difference between the tens of thousands of people who finish the marathon and those that don’t is that the finishers figured out where to put their tired.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 169)
“It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 103)
“Who wants to do difficult work that doesn’t fulfill us? Who wants to commit to a journey before we know it’s what we were meant to do? The trap is this: only after we do the difficult work does it become our calling. Only after we trust the process does it become our passion. ‘Do what you love’ is for amateurs. ‘Love what you do’ is the mantra for professionals.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 22)
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
Andy Grove | Read Matt’s Blog on this Quote ➜
“The long, slow grind of working toward something is all about loving the process. If you don’t love the process, the grind is tough. The grind is also a dangerous time. It’s when you’re tempted to give up, call it a day, or at least cut corners.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 195)
Hard Work Doesn’t Always Pay Off
“Work hard,
and you will earn good rewards.
Work smart,
and you will earn great rewards.
Work hard and work smart,
and you will earn extraordinary rewards.”
Matshona Dhliwayo
Beyond the Quote (Day 398)
I remember learning this lesson in college when, after giving a big presentation, I found out a classmate of mine—who did far less work than me—got a better grade than me. I vaguely remember the details of the project, but the feelings are as fresh as they were 10 years ago. I was heated. I felt cheated. I kept replaying the thought that I did 10x the work and ending up with nothing to show for it. And I didn’t want to just let all of my hard work go to waste—I wanted to prove that those hours counted for something!
Read More »Hard Work Doesn’t Always Pay Off