Top 90 Jocelyn K. Glei Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “To make great ideas a reality, we must act, experiment, fail, adapt, and learn on a daily basis.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

2. “Nothing truly innovative, nothing that has advanced art, business, design, or humanity, was ever created in the face of genuine certainty or perfect information. Because the only way to be certain before you begin is if the thing you seek to do has already been done. In which case, you’re no longer creating, you’re replicating. And that’s not why we’re here.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

3. “It’s not about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen.” Frequently.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

4. “Here’s how it works for Stephen King: There are certain things I do if I sit down to write. I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning. I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.1.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

5. “The world is random and unpredictable, which means that it is close to impossible to outline exactly what your next best move is. But you can explore it – by doing and trying. Just make sure you don’t go all in before you’ve figured out that it works.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

6. “Whether it’s intelligence, creativity, self-control, charm, or athleticism – the science shows our abilities to be profoundly malleable. When it comes to mastering any skill, your experience, effort, and persistence matter a lot. Change really is always possible – there is no ability that can’t be developed with effort. So the next time you find yourself thinking, “But I’m just not good at this,” remember: you’re just not good at it yet.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

7. “Truly great creative achievements require hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work, and we have to make time every single day to put in those hours. Routines help us do this by setting expectations about availability, aligning our workflow with our energy levels, and getting our minds into a regular rhythm of creating.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

8. “At the end of the day – or, really, from the beginning – building a routine is all about persistence and consistency. Don’t wait for inspiration; create a framework for it.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

9. “Treat your work as a refuge – an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re not on fire creatively every day – give yourself credit if you show up for work and make even a small amount of progress. When you put down your tools for the day, you may even see your personal situation with a fresh eye. POVERTY.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

10. “What is a professional, anyway? A professional is someone who can keep working at a high level of effort and ethics, no matter what is going on – for good or ill – around him or inside him. A professional shows up every day. A professional plays hurt. A professional takes neither success nor failure personally.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

11. “Thought, if not written down and shared with others, changes nothing. Does it matter?”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

12. “The idea is that one day a week, you need to get your mind in a different mode, you need to not work. Every week, your brain – and your soul – needs to be reset.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

13. “Establish hard edges in your day. Set a start time and a finish time for your workday – even if you work alone. Dedicate different times of day to different activities: creative work, meetings, correspondence, administrative work, and so on. These hard edges keep tasks from taking longer than they need to and encroaching on your other important work.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

14. “In short, lucky people are open-minded, upbeat, proactive, and always willing to try something new. While it’s good to be directed in your career, you’ll want to stay open and alert to unexpected possibilities. And when they show up, act on them. You never know what the outcome might be.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

15. “The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you’re apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. It’s the equivalent of the dream time, in your daily life, times when things get sorted out and reshuffled. If you’re constantly awake work-wise you don’t allow that to happen.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

16. “Yet there wasn’t a single day when I sat down to write an article, blog post, or book chapter without a string of people waiting for me to get back to them. It.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

17. “We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period, provided we work slowly and consistently.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

18. “Frank Lloyd Wright insisted that constraints historically have resulted in a flowering of the imagination: “The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest and, therefore, when most was required of imagination in order to build at all.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

19. “Every time you’re doing something, you’re not doing something else. But you don’t really see what it is that you’re giving up. Especially when it comes to, let’s say, e-mail versus doing something that takes fifty hours.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

20. “Like it or not, we are constantly forced to juggle tasks and battle unwanted distractions – to truly set ourselves apart, we must learn to be creative amidst chaos.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

21. “The challenge is that the demand in our lives increasingly exceeds our capacity.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

22. “Whatever your strengths are, they will likely lead straight into your weaknesses.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

23. “After high school, kids know everything, after their bachelor’s degree, they know something, and after a PhD, they now know that they know nothing.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

24. “Be aware of the cost of constant connection. If your focus is always on others – and quenching your appetite for information and external validation – you will miss out on the opportunity to mine the potential of your own mind. Recognize.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

25. “With focus and consistency you can change your habits. By changing your habits, you reprogram the behaviors that control most of your life and ultimately determine your success.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

26. “When you make choices that will affect your career, aim for the intersection of your genuine interests, skills, and opportunities.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

27. “To truly excel, you must also continue to create for the most important audience of all: yourself.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

28. “If you’re feeling frustrated with your progress toward your goals, it’s tempting to focus on what you lack that other people seem to have, to obsess over followers, engagement, traffic, or any other benchmark. The reality is that numbers don’t necessarily measure success, and they’re certainly not a requirement for fulfillment.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

29. “Creative minds are highly susceptible to distraction, and our newfound connectivity poses a powerful temptation for all of us to drift off focus.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

30. “What would it mean to approach e-mail and social media mindfully?”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

31. “In other words, if you’re not motivated to be nice because of the good karma, be motivated to be nice because ultimately it saves time.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

32. “How does being tethered to our devices impact our physical bodies – and even our imaginations?”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

33. “When we are working with intention, we toil away endlessly – often through the wee hours of the morning – on projects we care about deeply. Whether it’s building an intricate model of an ancient ship, writing a song, or mapping out an idea for your first business, you do it out of genuine interest and love.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

34. “The enemy of creation is not uncertainty, it’s inertia.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

35. “I never schedule meetings in the morning, if I can avoid it.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

36. “If you want a new challenge at work or more responsibility, it’s on you to pitch your boss or your client on what needs to be done, why it’s a good idea, why you’re the best person to do it, and why everyone will benefit. Lead the way with your own creativity and initiative, and back it up with enthusiasm and a strong business case.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

37. “Artist, architect, and activist Maya Lin’s purpose shows up not only in what she makes but also in what she chooses not to make. She spends her time focused solely on the projects and causes that allow her to grow and contribute. She says “no” to the rest. Restraint and discipline come to those who are clear about their purpose in life.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

38. “Pick a vision that is ambitious and far-reaching enough to last decades, not years. Commit.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

39. “Want to change the world? Push everyone you know to work within their ISO. Mentor people to help them realize their genuine interests and skills and capitalize on even the smallest opportunities around them. When it comes to your own career, make every decision with a constant eye toward your own intersection. A career of “work with intention” is the kind that moves industries forward. Do it for yourself and for the rest of us.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

40. “We all want to feel like we’re part of something larger than ourselves, and we all want to believe that what we do matters.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

41. “A great option for the night owls among us is to use the late-night hours for solitude and distraction-free space. If you work best at night, you can find solitude by scheduling a block of time to work alone after dark.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

42. “Both the top two groups slept an average of 8.5 hours out of every 24 – including a twenty- to thirty-minute nap in the midafternoon. The least skilled group still slept 7.8 hours a night. The average American, by contrast, sleeps an average of 6 to 6.5 hours a night. Sleep not only serves a restorative purpose but also allows the brain to more effectively consolidate and retain daytime learning. The top violinists recognized this intuitively, and slept accordingly.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

43. “Stage One is simply being able to sit down and work, if only for a single hour. Don’t laugh. Ninety-nine out of a hundred can’t do it. This stage is entry-level. It’s kindergarten.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

44. “To “know thyself” is hard work. Harder still is to believe that you, with all your flaws, are enough – without checking in, tweeting an update, or sharing a photo as proof of your existence for the approval of your 719 followers.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

45. “Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of solitude because it means facing yourself without distractions.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

46. “Consumers don’t need many things from your brand – they just need one thing from your brand. You.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

47. “Leigh Michaels, prolific author of more than eighty romance novels, once said that “waiting for inspiration to write is like standing at the airport waiting for a train.” Conditions to produce one’s craft are rarely ideal, and waiting for everything to be perfect is almost always an exercise in procrastination.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

48. “Dedicate different times of day to different activities: creative work, meetings, correspondence, administrative work, and so on.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

49. “You can surrender your day-to-day and the potential of your work to the burdens that surround you. Or, you can audit the way you work and own the responsibility of fixing it.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei

50. “Basic economics tells us that if you want something rare and valuable, you need to offer something rare and valuable in return – and in the working world, what you have to offer are your skills.”

— Jocelyn K. Glei