The Creative Practice
Best lines of 2025 (Part 2)
đ Happy holidays! Consider gifting Tao of Founders to an entrepreneur you love â€ïž
On Commitment & Differentiation
âThe best you could say for it was that it was lonely and painful. But as I started to win by greater and greater margins I did it more and more, because I knew the reason for my success was that out on the sand dunes I was doing something that no one else was doing. Difference itself was making me come first.â â James Dyson
Stand out by zeroing in on the few things others canât or wonât do. Total commitment unlocks cognitive resources normally wasted on backup planning.
âWhat Iâve learned from running is that the time to push hard is when youâre hurting like crazy and you want to give up. The moment you should accelerate is the moment youâre the most tired. Success is often just around the corner.â â James Dyson
Persistence and knowing when to push harder despite exhaustion distinguishes those who succeed from those who give up just before breakthrough.
âBusiness marries you, you sleep with it, eat with it, think about it much of your time. It is in a very real sense an act of love. If it isnât an act of love, itâs merely work, not business.â â EstĂ©e Lauder
The level of commitment needed to build something significant cannot be sustained without genuine love for the work itself.
70% commitment yields only 20% chance of success, while 100% commitment jumps to 75% probability.
This isnât motivational rhetoric but empirical fact. Partial commitment creates partial results. Go All-In.
On Focus & Intention
âWhen you focus by saying no to something, you experience a mini-death: you say goodbye to a relationship, an idea, an expectation somewhere down in the future. It sucks to grieve. But actively grieving makes room for you to grow into your higher potential.â
Focus isnât an intellectual problemâotherwise youâd have solved it already. The emotional drivers that hinder focus overpower conscious thought. Focus is an emotional skill disguised as an intellectual one.
âFocus means saying no to something with every bone in your body screaming yes.â â Steve Jobs
âI have always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. My whole life has been about fulfilling dreams. I kept my eye on the target whatever that target was.â â EstĂ©e Lauder
âWhat I do better than anything else is cut out distractions. If a system isnât working efficiently, I can see where itâs jammed, eliminate the problem, and find a way to keep everything moving forward.â â Paul Van Doren, Founder of Vans
An organizationâs focus rests on its leaderâs ability to focus.
âWith time, your ability rises to the level of your intentions. If you focus only on what you perceive as feasible today, you end up selling yourself short in the future.â
James Cameron worked on Avatar for 15 years, deliberately choosing projects that push boundaries. By being highly intentional, he embraces the discomfort of monumental tasks that scare other directors away.
âGoals can make you greedy. Perhaps the biggest downside of chasing your goals is how difficult it is to stop the goalpost from moving after you reach the initial target. While humans innately seek to push our limits, a sense of having and being enough is the highest form of wealth one can have.â
Donât use goals to escape from a today you wish was entirely different. Create goals that start with your current reality, and build with it.