“Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.”

“It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.”

“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”

“True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

“The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.”

“People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.”

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”

“Activity without purpose is the drain of your life.”

“After climbing a great hill, one only finds there are many more hills to climb.”

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

“A man without a sense of purpose, even one whose bank accounts are stuffed with money, is always a small man.”

“A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose – a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.”

Finding our purpose is not easy. It's a process, a journey, a search. But, these purpose quotes will help you find and live your purpose.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Inspiring Purpose Quotes to Help You Discover Your Purpose

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

education

Learning & Education

Isaac Asimov Quotes

Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.

I'm always asked, 'What's the secret to success?' But there are no secrets. Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.

Attitude and enthusiasm play a big part in my life. I get excited about the things that inspire me. I also believe in laughing and having a good time.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

I like to use the hard times in the past to motivate me today.

Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

Life is anything but predictable.

Not only do I think being nice and kind is easy but being kind, in my opinion, is important.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you're not alone.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I know nothing. I mean, that's my life lesson.

With drive and a bit of talent, you can move mountains. I know. I've done it.

I've always seen first responders as unsung heroes and very special people because, when everyone else is running away from danger, they run into it.

If you tell me there's something I can't do, I'll want to do it even more. Especially when it comes to entertaining.

I knew credibility would come only in time and through earnest performances.

I've learned never to say never.

Enjoy the best Dwayne Johnson Quotes at BrainyQuote. Quotations by Dwayne Johnson, American Actor, Born May 2, 1972. Share with your friends.

movies

Movies & Shows

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Dwayne Johnson Quotes

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I'll say that. Wonder and terror.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

Energy can't be created or destroyed, and energy flows. It must be in a direction, with some kind of internal, emotive, spiritual direction. It must have some effect somewhere.

Enjoy the best Keanu Reeves Quotes at BrainyQuote. Quotations by Keanu Reeves, Canadian Actor, Born September 2, 1964. Share with your friends.

Keanu Reeves Quotes

“If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.”

“No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.”

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”

“Find someone who has a life that you want and figure out how they got it. Read books, pick your role models wisely. Find out what they did and do it.”

“Imagination creates reality.”

“Never stop fighting no matter what anyone says. If it’s in your gut, your soul, there’s nothing, no worldly possession that should come between you and your expression.”

“The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.”

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

“Everything is scary if you look at it. So you just got to live it.”

“Some people come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same.”

“One thing I’ve learned is that I’m not the owner of my talent; I’m the manager of it.”

“You can’t knock on opportunity’s door and not be ready.”

“You build on failure. Use it as a stepping stone and close the door on the past. Don’t try to forget the mistakes, but don’t dwell on it.

“You can’t give up something you really believe in for financial reasons.”

“I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.”

“Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you’re doing. If you’re not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it.”

“Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.”

“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”

“You don’t have to believe everything you think.”

"Where’s your will to be weird?”

“There’s always that argument to make – that you’re in better company historically if people don’t understand what you’re doing.”

“Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.”

Musicians have done much more than just give us great songs to enjoy. Here are 50 great quotes from musicians to inspire you.

music

Music

Quotes from Musicians About Life, Love, Work & More

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."

"Learning never exhausts the mind."

"All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of experience, the mother of all knowledge."

"The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known."

"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. So we must stretch ourselves to the very limits of human possibility. Anything less is a sin against both God and man."

"Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous."

"Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience, it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason."

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen."

"The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects."

"Nature never breaks her own laws."

"I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death."

"Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in."

Leonardo Da Vinci was both a talented artist and a talented inventor, hear inspirational quotes from a master.

philosophy

Philosophy

Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Freud helps us understand why our lives and relationships are full of problems and pain. He explains why life is hard and how to cope.  Despite his success in later years, he was often unhappy. He stated during some research he recorded, "The chief patient I am preoccupied with is myself." Perhaps because of this, Freud gained deep insights into the sources of human unhappiness.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis

Freud proposed that humans are driven by the pleasure principle, which gives people easy physical and emotional rewards and drives them away from unpleasant things like drudgery and discipline. Freud argued that infants were guided by the pleasure principle. However,  indulging in pleasure without constraints will lead to dangerous, reckless things like never doing any work or overeating or sleeping with members of one's own family.

The pleasure principle

Freud believed we needed to adjust to the reality principle. There are better and worse kinds of adaptations. The bad ones he called neuroses. Neuroses are the result of faulty negotiations with the pleasure principle.

The reality principle

<ol><li>The ID is driven by the pleasure principle.</li><li>The superego is driven by a desire to follow the rules and do the right social thing.</li><li>The ego has to accommodate the two.</li></ol>

The personality is composed of three elements

To understand the dynamics of the three elements, Freud refers to the origins of our neuroses in childhood in distinct phases. <ul><li>The oral phase: Dealing with the feelings around ingestion and eating. We might pick up on all kinds of neuroses, such as taking pleasure in refusing food, or overeating.</li><li>The anal phase: Testing the limits of authority.</li><li>The phallic phase ends around age 6. Freud insists that children have sexual feelings and direct them towards their parents. He described the Oedipus complex, where children are predisposed towards "being in love with one parent and hating the other."</li></ul>

The origins of neuroses in a child

In this book, Freud wrote that society can give us many things, but by imposing heavy dictates on us: insisting that we sleep with only a few, imposing the incest taboo, requiring us to put off our immediate desires, demanding that we follow authority, that we work to earn money. He states that societies function by being neurotic and that it is the reason for wars and other difficulties.

Civilisation and its Discontents - 1930

Freud attempted to invent a treatment for neuroses, namely psychoanalysis. He thought proper analysis could uncover what troubles people and help to adjust reality. He analysed a number of key things.<ul><li>He looked at people's dreams, which he described as wish fulfilment.</li><li>He looked at revealing slips of the tongues, we know as Freudian slips.</li><li>He said we used jokes to relieve our anxiety about topics like death or marriage.</li></ul>

Psychoanalysis as a treatment for neurosis

Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis, appreciated the many ways in which our minds are troubled and anxious. It isn't us in particular: it's the human condition. Find out more about how Freud thought in our 'Great Thinkers': https://goo.gl/toR8m8 If you like our films, take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): https://goo.gl/7JluX0 FURTHER READING “He described himself as an obsessional neurotic. For although the father of modern psychology told us so much about our inner lives, he was touchingly vulnerable himself....” You can read more on this and many other topics on our blog TheBookofLife.org: https://goo.gl/WtiV8v MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Our website has classes, articles and products to help you think and grow: https://goo.gl/NJ702c More films on PSYCHOTHERAPY in our playlist below: http://bit.ly/TSOLpsychotherapy Do you speak a different language to English? Did you know you can submit Subtitles on all of our videos on YouTube? For instructions how to do this click here: https://goo.gl/fUMMxh SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Mad Adam http://www.madadamfilms.co.uk #TheSchoolOfLife

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

videos

Videos

PSYCHOTHERAPY - Sigmund Freud

<ul>
<li>Product sense is not something you need to be born with. It's a learned skill, just like any other PM skill.</li>
<li>You do need to develop your product sense muscle as you move up in seniority, and there are four ways to do so.</li>
</ul>

How Do I Develop Product Sense ?

<ul>
<li>Product sense is the skill of consistently being able to craft products (or make changes to existing products) that have the intended impact on their users</li>
<li>It relies on (1) empathy to discover meaningful user needs and (2) creativity to come up with solutions that effectively address those needs</li>
</ul>

What Exactly Is Product Sense ?

<ul>
<li>Building empathy: Observe people interacting with products.</li>
<li>Deconstruct everyday products</li>
<li>Improving creativity: Learn from great product thinkers</li>
<li>Be curious about changes in technology and your domain</li>
<li>Use product sense to drive user value and business impact</li>
</ul>

Building Product Sense

<ul>
<li>Pay attention to micro details and ask yourself why people react to your product the way they do</li>
<li>Observe their facial expressions as they try various aspects of your product, and try to spot moments when they're hesitant, confused, excited, etc.</li>
<li>In those moments, ask open-ended questions to better understand not just how they feel but, more importantly, why</li>
</ul>

Observe People Interacting With Products

<ul>
<li>Spend one or two hours a month trying out new products and deconstructing them to strengthen your intuition and identify common UX best practices and paradigms.</li>
<li>Observe yourself using everyday products to gain insight into people’s motivations and needs.</li>
</ul>

Deconstruct Everyday Products

<ul>
<li>Every detail about the user experience matters</li>
<li>Spend time understanding user problems and framing them in a way that sets strong constraints for the team</li>
<li>Understand why a problem exists and frame it clearly</li>
<li>Identify enough constraints that only a few solutions will be left, streamlining the decision-making process</li>
</ul>

Learn From Great Product Thinkers

<ul>
<li>Changes in the industry create opportunities for launching new products that can address user needs in new ways.</li>
<li>There are two levels of emerging trends to keep track of: macro and micro</li>
<li>Macro: important platform shifts (e.g. web3, AR/VR, AI)</li>
<li>Micro: changes in regulations and new privacy protection laws</li>
<li>Keep an open mind about new technologies, don’t dismiss them as a fad</li>
</ul>

Be Curious About Changes In Technology And Your Domain

<ul><li><div>As you get better at it, you will: Notice subtle things about products and people that you would have missed before </div> </li><li><div>Anticipate non-obvious user problems </div> </li><li><div>Develop higher-quality hypotheses about product experiences to build </div> </li><li><div>Contribute more unique insights to your team </div> </li><li><div>Be right more often than not about what impact a change to a flow has on metrics </div> </li> </ul>

How To Tell If You’re Getting Better At Product Sense 

product

Product & Design

How to develop product sense

A January 2022 Slack survey of more than 10,000 knowledge workers and their leaders shows that the top concern for executives about hybrid and remote work is “proximity bias.” Namely, 41% feel worried about the negative impact on work culture from the prospect of inequality between office-centric, hybrid and fully remote employees.
The difference in time spent in the office leads to concerns ranging from decreased career mobility for those who spend less facetime with their supervisor to resentment building up against the staff who have the most flexibility in where to work.

Proximity Bias In Remote/Flexible Workers

Surveys show that two-thirds of large employers intend to have a mainly hybrid schedule after the pandemic ends for non-front line employees, with some fully remote and some office-centric.
Employee surveys show that two-thirds to three-quarters of all workers who can work at least some time remotely want a very flexible hybrid or fully remote schedule permanently.

Failure Of Leaders To Adapt To A Flexible Future Of Work: Survey Findings

There’s an important retention issue involved in providing employees with their desired level of flexibility, especially in the context of the Great Resignation. The survey indicates that of those knowledge workers not satisfied with the flexibility at their workplace, 72% are likely to look for a new job in the next year. That’s an especially important issue from the perspective of diversity. While 75% of white knowledge workers want a hybrid or fully remote schedule, 86% of Hispanic/Latinx and 81% of Asian/Asian-American and Black knowledge workers want such flexibility.

The Fickle Nature Of Remote Workers

Why haven’t leaders addressed the obvious problem of proximity bias?
Any reasonable external observer could predict the issues arising from differences in time spent in the office. Unfortunately, leaders often fail to see the clear threat in front of their noses.
You might have heard of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Fragility/dp/081297381X">black swans</a>, the hard-to-predict, low-probability, high-impact threats like the pandemic. Well, the opposite kind of threats are called <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250053824">gray rhinos</a>: obvious dangers that we fail to see because of our mental blindspots.

Black Swans And Grey Rhinos

Cognitive biases or mental blindspots are dangerous judgment errors that result in poor strategic and financial decisions. They render leaders unable to resist following their gut instead of relying on best practices. 
One of these biases is called functional fixedness. When we have a certain perception of appropriate practices, we tend to disregard other more appropriate alternatives.

Mental Blindspots: Cognitive Bias

Trying to transpose existing ways of collaboration in “office culture” to remote work is a prime example of functional fixedness. 
That’s why leaders fail to address strategically the problems arising with the shift to a hybrid-centric culture of work. They thought their pre-existing ways of management would be more than enough for the new world. Unfortunately for them, the context changed, and they ended up like fish out of water.

Imposing The Old Way

Another cognitive bias, related to functional fixedness, is called the<a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amp.2013.0091"> not-invented-here syndrome</a>. It’s a leader’s antipathy towards adopting practices not invented within their organization, no matter how useful. No wonder that leaders fail to look externally for techniques to address proximity-bias related issues. Instead, they try to come up with their own strategies and often work very hard and spend way too many resources to reinvent the wheel. If they’re lucky, it’s round, but too often, it’s a square wheel.

Not Invented Here

Many organizations may need some employees to come in full-time. Others may need to come in on a hybrid schedule even if they worked full-time remotely during the pandemic. 
Addressing these potential cultural divides is vital to prevent a sense of “haves” and “have-nots” from developing, as well as pre-empting career-limiting facetime differences with supervisors. Leaders can address this by focusing on a shared culture of “Excellence From Anywhere”. 
This culture takes into account the nature of an employee's work and promotes task-based policies, allowing remote work whenever possible.

'Excellence From Anywhere' Strategy

The “Excellence From Anywhere” strategy addresses concerns about divides by <a href="https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/effective-remote-team-management-through-weekly-performance-evaluations/">focusing on deliverables</a>, regardless of where you work. Doing so also involves adopting best practices for hybrid and remote <a href="https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/effective-virtual-collaboration-for-a-thriving-culture-in-hybrid-and-remote-teams/">collaboration</a> and <a href="https://fortune.com/2021/10/19/hybrid-remote-work-innovation-virtual-brainstorming/">innovation</a>. By valuing deliverables, collaboration and innovation through a focus on the shared work culture of “Excellence From Anywhere,” you can instil in your employees a focus on deliverables. The core idea is to get all of your workforce to pull together to achieve business outcomes; the location doesn’t matter.

Benefits Of 'Excellence From Anywhere'

Addressing the problem of 'Facetime with the Boss' necessitates shifting from the traditional, high-stakes, large-scale quarterly or even annual performance evaluations to much more frequent weekly or biweekly, low-stakes, brief performance evaluation one-on-one check-ins.
Supervisees agree on three to five weekly or biweekly performance goals with their supervisor. Then, 72 hours before their check-in meeting, they send a brief report to their boss under a page of how they did on these goals, what challenges they faced and how they overcame them.

Facetime With Managers

The transition to a hybrid and remote work culture in the post-pandemic recovery leads to the threat of resentment over flexibility and worries over career standing due to facetime with the boss. 
This reframes the conversation to help everyone focus on pulling together to achieve shared business objectives and prioritizing deliverables rather than where and how you work through <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B095J5NNJW/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=intentinsigh-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B095J5NNJW&linkId=78ad7c97cef73259f8a7edf8f22ad158">research-based best practices</a>.

The Bottom Line

Flexibility is the key to success in a post-pandemic work culture. 

remotework

Remote Work

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Why Proximity Bias Keeps Leaders From Excelling in the Era of Hybrid and Remote Work

The only thing that has really helped to bridge the virtual gap between employees and managers is communication. However, both over-communicating and under-communicating — the extreme ends of optimal communication — come with their downsides. If there’s poor communication from the manager, there’s a risk of a wide gap in meeting team goals, delays in project completion, and duplication of work. On the other hand, if a manager is over-communicating, they risk wasting time, demotivating their team, and micromanaging their direct reports to the point of burnout

Finding Balance In Your Communication Frequency

1-on-1 meetings are a great opportunity for managers to talk candidly with their direct reports. They are also opportunities for managers to grow as leaders of a remote team, to reflect on their own mentoring skills, their ability to give feedback and listen to constructive criticism. Some questions that managers can ask during these meetings:<ul><li>What’s on your mind this week?</li><li>Last time we spoke, you said X was a challenge for you. How is that going?</li><li>What are your plans and priorities for this week?</li><li>How aligned do you feel with where the company is going?</li><li>What feedback do you have for me?</li></ul>

Host Frequent 1:1 Meetings And Be Open To Feedback 

It’s really important for remote leaders to set rules around how, when, and which communication tools to use when working in virtual teams. When to use Slack? Which situations call for an email? Under what circumstances should an ad-hoc meeting be scheduled? Set up project collaboration tools to track project updates. If a project would benefit from creative and energetic exchange of ideas, then schedule a call for clarity. Complement video calls with traditional emails for company-wide communication.

Set Up Communication Guidelines

Micromanagement can be a costly management style that can lead to low employee morale, high staff turnover, reduction of productivity, and overall dissatisfaction. Avoid constantly asking for status updates as this can come across as having a lack of trust in the team to do their work, and that’s a slippery slope no manager wants to be on.Micromanagement can lead to impostor syndrome, and also lead to disappointment and lack of motivation for certain employees, so watch out for those common signals that managers may need to take a step back.

Make An Effort To Not Micromanage

<ul><li>Synchronous communication includes every form of communication that happens in real-time, and there’s an immediate response.</li><li>Asynchronous communication includes every form of communication that doesn’t happen in real-time, and responses can occur intermittently. Asynchronous communication is impactful for teams that work across time zones, as there’s no expectation of an immediate response.</li></ul>It’s down to the managers on how and what tools they want to implement with the team.

Asynchronous and Synchronous communication.

Discover how to strike the balance between over-communicating and under-communicating as the manager of a remote team. 

Inspiring Purpose Quotes to Help You Discover Your Purpose

Isaac Asimov Quotes

Dwayne Johnson Quotes

Keanu Reeves Quotes

Quotes from Musicians About Life, Love, Work & More

Cynthia Fowler