Other Books Archives - Page 16 of 23 - Ben Rosenfeld

December 9, 2014December 7, 2014

“10% Happier” Quotes

I recently read “10% Happier: How I tamed the voice in my head, reduced stress without losing my edge, and found self-help that actually works” by Dan Harris. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, click here to buy the book.

“Many of us labor under the delusion that we’re permanently stuck with all of the difficult parts of our personalities – that we are “hot-tempered,” or “shy,” or “sad”- and that these are fixed, immutable traits. We now know that many of the attributes we value most are, in fact, skills, which can be trained the same way you build your body in the gym.” (xv)

“As the Buddhists say, “the only way out is through.”

“Seeing a problem clearly does not prevent you from taking action, Mark explained. Acceptance is not passivity. Sometimes we are justifiably displeased. What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, “respond” rather than simply “react.” In the Buddhist view, you can’t control what comes up in your head; it all arises out of a mysterious void. We spend a lot of time judging ourselves harshly for feelings that we had no role in summoning. The only thing you can control is how you handle it.” (115)

“Dukkha doesn’t actually mean ‘suffering.’ There’s no perfect word in English, but it’s closer to ‘unsatisfying’ or ‘stressful.’ When the Buddha coined his famous phrase, he wasn’t saying that all of life is like being chained to a rock and having crows peck out your innards. What he really meant was something like, ‘Everything in the world is ultimately unsatisfying and unreliable because it won’t last.’” (142)

“Learn how to be happy ‘before anything happens.’” (144)

“But when you find yourself running through your trip to the airport for the seventeenth time, perhaps ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this useful’? (149)

“It’s not that I have different feelings, but I don’t identify and attach to them-or make them a huge drama. You allow your emotions to come pass through with ease.” (157)

“The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.” (165)

“Once you unburden yourself from the delusion that people are deliberately trying to screw you, it’s easier to stop getting carried away.” (188)

“Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome – so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray.” (207)

“All I had to do was tell myself: if it doesn’t work, I only need the grit to start again – just like when my mind wandered in meditation.” (207)

“A monk said, ‘there’s no point in being unhappy about things you can’t change, and no point being unhappy about things you can.’” (210)

“Mediation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.” (231)

Liked the quotes? Buy the book here.

November 26, 2014

“Growth Hacker Marketing” Quotes

I recently read “Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer On The Future of PR, Marketing, And Advertising” by Ryan Holiday. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like these quotes, buy the book here.

“I think anyone marketing or launching fantasizes that they are premiering a blockbuster movie. And this illusion shapes and warps every marketing decision we make.” (xix)

“Our delusion is that we should be Transformers and not The Blair Witch Project.” (xix)

“The best marketing decision you can make is to have a product or business that fulfills a real and compelling need for a real and defined group of people.” (2)

“The books that tend to flop upon release are those where the author goes into a cave for a year to write it, then hands it off to the publisher for release. They hope for a hit that rarely comes.” (7)

“They test the ideas they’re writing about in the book on their blog and when they speak in front of groups. They ask readers what they’d like to see in the book. They judge topic ideas by how many comments a given post generates, by how many Facebook “shares” an article gets. They put potential title and cover ideas up online to test and receive feedback.” (8)

“Phil Libin said, “People thinking about things other than making the best product, never make the best product.”” (10)

“Once we stop thinking of the products we market as static – that our job as marketers is to simply work with what we’ve got instead of working on and improving what we’ve got – the whole game changes.” (11)

“Brian Halligan says, “you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products.”” (15)

“All of these types of outreach are done with a very specific mindset, with a very specific goal. We are not “spreading the word”; we’re not throwing up a billboard in Times Square and hoping in six months someone will spot our product in a grocery store and decide to pick it up. Instead, we are intensely focused on driving an initial set of new user sign-ups and customers, right now.” (26)

“It doesn’t matter how many people know about you or how they find out about you. It matters how many sign up.” (26)

“Patrick Vlaskovits puts it: “Focusing on customer acquisition over ‘awareness’ takes discipline… At a certain scale, awareness/brand building makes sense. But for the first year or two it’s a total waste of money.” (28)

“Users have to be pulled in. A good idea is not enough. Your customers, in fact, have to be “acquired.” But the way to do that isn’t with a bombardment. It’s with a targeted offensive in the right places aimed at the right people.” (28)

“The good news is that we have to do that only once. Because the next step isn’t about getting more attention or publicity. The endless promotional cycle of traditional marketing is not our destiny. Because once we bring our first customers in, our next move is to set about turning them into an army.” (29)

“Only a specific type of product or business or piece of content will go viral – it not only has to be worth spreading, it has to provoke a desire in people to spread it. Until you have accomplished that, or until your client is doing something truly remarkable, it just isn’t going to happen.” (32)

“Virality at its core is asking someone to spend their social capital recommending or linking or posting about you for free. You’re saying: Post about me on Facebook. Tell your friends to watch my video. Invite your business contacts to use this service. The best way to get people to do this enormous favor for you? Make it seem like it isn’t a favor. Make it the kind of thing that is worth spreading and, of course, conducive to spreading.” (33)

“You should not just encourage sharing but create powerful incentives to do so.” (34)

“You can’t just make a YouTube video about whatever you want and expect it to get ten million views. There has to be a compelling reason for a community to take hold of it and pass it around. You can’t just epxect your users to become evangelists of your product – you’ve got to provide the incentives and the platform for them to do so. Virality is not an accident. It is engineered.” (40)

“In an effort to improve the site’s aesthetic appeal and attract higher-end customers, Airbnb began offering free professional photography for its listings. If you listed your house on the service, they’d send a pro over to take amazing photos that made your house look irresistible.” (47)

“What growth hackers have mastered is the ability to grow and expand their businesses without having to chase down new customers.” (49)

“The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70 percent, while a new prospect it’s just 5 to 20 percent.” (55)

“Tim took Product Market Fit to the next level – designed each chapter to stand alone on its own merits and made specifically for a defined community and group of readers.” (59)

“When your product is actually relevant and designed for a specific audience, bloggers love to write about you. Writing articles about you means more pageviews (and advertising revenue) for them!” (60)

“If you’re planning to launch a business in a few months or a few years, start building your platform – and your network – today.” (61)

“Marketing, too many people forget, is not an end unto itself. It is simply getting customers. And by the transitive property, anything that gets customers is marketing.” (66)

“You’ve got to build a list, because a list is the easiest and most effective marketing tool, period.” (76)

“If people are coming to your site and only a small percentage “stay,” the answer is never, I repeat, never, to try to get high volumes of traffic.” (81)

Liked the quotes? Click here to buy the book.

October 14, 2014

“Ask and It Is Given” Quotes

I recently read “Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires” by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. As always, if you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” (xv)

“I [say your name] see and draw to me, through divine love, those Beings who seek enlightenment through my process. The sharing will elevate us both now.” (xxiv)

“That is the optimal creative vantage point: To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation – with no feelings of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it – that is the Science of Deliberate Creation at its best.” (19)

“If there is something that you desire that you currently do not have, and you put your attention upon your current state of not having it, then Law of Attraction will continue to match that not having it vibration, so you will continue to not have that which you desire. It is Law.” (26)

“The key to bringing something into your experience that you desire is to achieve vibrational harmony with what you desire. And the easiest way for you to achieve vibrational harmony with it is to imagine having it, pretend that it is already in your experience, flow your thoughts toward the enjoyment of the experience, and as you practice those thoughts and begin to consistently offer that vibration, you will then be in the place of allowing that into your experience.” (26)

“If you are predominantly thinking about the things that you desire, your life experience reflects those things. And, in the same way, if you are predominantly thinking about what you do not want, your life experience reflects those things.” (27)

You do not announcing your inability to accomplish your journey. You accept the distance between your starting place and where you desire to be – and you continue to move in the direction of your destination. You understand what is required – and you do it.” (37)

“When you really, really want something, and you are thinking about your desire and feeling pleasure from the thought, your thought vibration is now in alignment with your desire.” (66)

“You will never get there, so enjoy your journey.” (85)

“There is tremendous value when you are able to deliberately cause even the slightest improvement in the way you feel, for even in that small emotional improvement, you may have regained a measure of control.” (117)

“If a severely depressed person could consciously discover the relief of an angry thought, and, more important, could consciously recognize that he has deliberately chosen the angry thought, he would immediately regain a sense of his own power, and his depression would life. now, of course, it is important that he does not remain in his place of anger. But, form that angry place he now has access to the relieving thoughts of frustration.” (117)

“When your desire feels so big that it feels unreachable, it is not on the verge of manifestation. When your desire feels to you like it is the next logical step, then it is on the verge of manifestation.” (122)

“The longer you focus upon things that feel good to you, the easier it is for you to maintain those vibrational frequencies that feel good. And the more you maintain these good feeling frequencies, the more the Law of Attraction will deliver to you other thoughts, experiences, people, and things that match your practiced vibration.” (143)

“Find a nice-looking box… on the lid… write the words: Whatever is contained in this box – IS!” (150)

“At the top of each sheet write on of the following headings, or categories: My Body. My Home. My Relationships. My Work… Focus on the first topic and on your first page, write: This is what I desire regarding my body… Now write the reasons why you want each of those things.” (156)

“The standard of success in life is not the money or the stuff – the standard of success is absolutely the amount of joy you feel.” (276)

“Success is about a happy life, and a happy life is just a string of happy moments. But most people do not allow the happy moments because they are so busy trying to get a happy life.” (276)

Liked the quotes? Click here to buy the book.

September 11, 2014September 10, 2014

“Where Good Ideas Come From” Quotes

I recently read “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. As always, if you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

“Good ideas are inevitably constrained by the parts and skills that surround them.” (28)

“The history of cultural progress is, almost without exception, a story of one door leading to another door, exploring the palace one room at a time.” (36)

“The most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.” (61)

“Most great ideas come into the world half-baked, more hunch than revelation.” (75)

“Most great ideas first take shape in a partial, incomplete form. They have the seeds of something profound, but they lack a key element that can turn the hunch into something truly powerful. And more often than not, that missing element is somewhere else, living as another hunch in another person’s head. Liquid networks create an environment where those partial ideas can connect; they provide a kind of dating service for promising hunches. They make it easier to disseminate good ideas, of course, but they also do something more sublime: they help complete ideas.” (75)

“The secret to organizational inspiration is to build information networks that allow hunches to persist and disperse and recombine.” (127)

“The groups that had been deliberately contaminated with erroneous information ended up making more original connections than the groups that had only been given pure information.” (141)

“An important part of Gutenberg’s genius, then, lay not in conceiving an entirely new technology from scratch, but instead from borrowing a mature technology from an entirely different field, and putting it to work to solve an unrelated problem.” (153)

“Lifestyles or interests that deviate from the mainstream need critical mass to survive; they atrophy in smaller communities not because those communities are more repressive, but rather because the odds of finding like-minded people are much lower with a smaller pool of individuals.” (160)

“But encouragement does not necessarily lead to creativity. Collisions do – the collisions that happen when different fields of expertise converge in some shared physical or intellectual space. That’s where the true sparks fly.” (163)

“Diverse, horizontal social networks, in Ruef’s analysis, were three times more innovative than uniform, vertical networks. In groups united by shared values and long-term familiarity, conformity and convention tended to dampen any potential creative sparks.” (166)

“The entrepreneurs who built bridges outside their “islands,” as Ruef called them, were able to borrow or co-opt new ideas from these external environments and put them to use in a new context.” (166)

“Watson and Crick were notorious for taking long, rambling coffee breaks, where they tossed around ideas in a more playful setting outside the lab – a practice that was generally scorned by their more fastidious colleagues.” (169)

“Genres supply a set of implicit rules that have enough coherence that traditionalists can safely play inside them, and more adventurous artists can confound our expectations by playing with them.” (191)

“When you don’t have to ask for permission, innovation thrives.” (209)

“Every twenty-five to thirty years a new batch of genres becomes dominant, as a new generation of readers seeks out new literary conventions.” (224)

Liked the quotes? Click here to buy the book.

May 29, 2014May 28, 2014

“The Hard Thing About Hard Things” Quotes

I recently read “The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers” by Ben Horowitz. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. As always, if you like the quotes, please buy the full book here.

“Colin Powell says that leadership is the ability to get someone to follow you even if only out of curiosity.” (5)

“The simple existence of an alternate, plausible scenario is often all that’s needed to keep hope alive among a worried workforce.” (5)

“Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.” (14)

“During the road show, as a way to break tension, Marc would say, ‘Remember, Ben, things are always darkest before they go completely black.’” (28)

“If you are going to eat shit, don’t nibble.” (29)

“As painful as it might be, I knew that we had to get into the broader market in order to understand it well enough to build the right product. paradoxically, the only way to do that was to ship and try to sell the wrong product. We would fall on our faces, but we would learn fast and do what was needed to survive.” (41)

“Markets weren’t ‘efficient’ at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion – often the wrong conclusion.” (52)

“Startup CEOs should not play the odds. WHen you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.” (59)

“People always ask me, ‘What’s the secret to being a successful CEO?’ Sadly, there is no secret, but if there is one skill that stands out, it’s the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves. It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.” (59)

“Nobody cares. And they are right to not care. A great reason for failing won’t preserve one dollar for your investors, won’t save one employee’s job, or get you one new customer. It especially won’t make you feel one bit better when you shut down your company and declare bankruptcy.” (92)

“All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current mess. Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares; just run your company.” (92)

“Being a good company doesn’t matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong. Things always go wrong. Being a good company is an end in itself.” (102)

“The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least ten times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter.” (179)

“The first rule of organizational design is that all organizational designs are bad.” (188)

“You want to optimize the organization for the people – for the people doing the work – not for the managers. Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.” (190)

“Hiring scalable execs too early is a bad mistake. There is no such thing as a great executive. There is only a great executive for a specific company at a specific point in time.” (194)

“Perhaps the most important thing that I learned as an entrepreneur was to focus on what I needed to get right and stop worrying about all the things that I did wrong or might do wrong.” (200)

“Focus on the road, not the wall.” (207)

“Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.” (213)

“The enemy of competence is sometimes confidence.” (223)

“To be a good CEO, in order to be liked in the long run, you must do many things that will upset people in the short run.” (230)

Liked the quotes? Click here to buy the book.