QuoteProject
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent and urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things.
Stephen Covey
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Every decision we make involves trade-offs, often sacrificing important things for less urgent matters.

In this quote, Stephen Covey emphasizes the importance of our choices and the inherent 'no' that comes with each decision. While we may often focus on saying 'no' to immediate tasks or distractions, we must also recognize that those choices can lead us to neglect more significant and meaningful opportunities in life, stressing the need for mindful prioritization.

Themes

DecisionPrioritizationTrade-OffsMindfulnessImportance

In practice

Example use cases

During a team meeting when discussing project priorities.

More from Stephen Covey

How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.
Stephen CoveyRead
If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee.
Stephen CoveyRead
Listen with your eyes for feelings.
Stephen CoveyRead
If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, _x000D_ we're tied to that which is infinite.
Stephen CoveyRead
Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.
Stephen CoveyRead
Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it / immediately.
Stephen CoveyRead

Similar quotes

For tyme ylost may nought recovered be.
Geoffrey ChaucerRead
While crime is punished it yet increases.
Seneca The YoungerRead
We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
Andre MauroisRead
This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death.
David Foster WallaceRead
My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state... It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.
Noam ChomskyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Stephen Covey | QuoteProject