We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, 'Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,' and that is true. Everything I've accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude.
Interpretation
Taking your time to do things carefully leads to greater efficiency in the long run.
The quote emphasizes the importance of a deliberate and careful approach to tasks. Jeff Bezos reflects on how a mindset focused on smooth and steady work, rather than rushing, has contributed to his successes. It's a reminder that patience and precision often yield better results than haste.
In practice
In a team meeting to discuss project timelines, you might say this quote to encourage careful planning over rushing.
We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Work hard, have fun and make history.
If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
If you want the Kingdom speeded, go out and speed it yourselves. Only obedience rationalizes prayer. Only Missions can redeem your intercessions from insincerity.
Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.
Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth doing.
If people are worried, if they're fearful, if they feel a sense of grievance or that they're not being treated properly or that they're not being paid fairly, what you're going to have is you're going to have people doing the minimum amount of work necessary to not get fired, and not a peppercorn more.
Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.
There's a responsibility to the coaches, to the organization, to the front office, to the owners, to everybody who believes in you enough to give you what you've gotten, to the fans that show up every day and pay to watch you play - all those things combined. It's not fair to take a day off.
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