Top 100 Ryder Carroll Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The more content you try to capture during a lecture or a meeting, the less you’re thinking about what’s being said. You burn through most of your attention parroting the source.”

— Ryder Carroll

52. “These studies and many like them indicate that the benefits of writing by hand stem from the very complaint consistently leveraged against it: inefficiency. That’s right: The fact that it takes longer to write things out by hand gives handwriting its cognitive edge.”

— Ryder Carroll

53. “Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert likens our memories to painted portraits instead of photographs, where our mind artistically interprets memory.20.”

— Ryder Carroll

54. “Like building muscle, we need to train our intentions to make them resilient and strong.”

— Ryder Carroll

55. “Eyes see only light, ears hear only sound, but a listening heart perceives meaning. – DAVID STEINDL-RAST.”

— Ryder Carroll

56. “Worry baits us with the promise of a solution but usually offers none.”

— Ryder Carroll

57. “If intentionality means acting according to your beliefs, then the opposite would be operating on autopilot. In other words, do you know why you’re doing what you’re doing?”

— Ryder Carroll

58. “An easy place to start with any endeavor is simply taking your thoughts out of your head and organizing them on paper. In so doing, you’ve already crossed the starting line to realize that it’s just another moment.”

— Ryder Carroll

59. “The rush of our busy lives can quietly carve out a gulf separating our actions from our beliefs.”

— Ryder Carroll

60. “The blank pages of your notebook offer a safe playground for your mind, where you’re completely free to express yourself without judgment or expectation.”

— Ryder Carroll

61. “The Bullet Journal method will help you accomplish more by working on less. It helps you identify and focus on what is meaningful by stripping away what is meaningless.”

— Ryder Carroll

62. “You can spend days, months, even years working in highly organized ways toward the wrong things.”

— Ryder Carroll

63. “Knowing where you are begins with knowing who you are.”

— Ryder Carroll

64. “What do I mean by that? We don’t have time because we’re working on a lot of things, yet things aren’t working out a lot of the time.”

— Ryder Carroll

65. “I’m not suggesting that you force yourself to become a chirpy Disney character with rainbows of perpetual optimism blasting out your nose.”

— Ryder Carroll

66. “In an “all-or-nothing” world, we tend to forget the power of something.”

— Ryder Carroll

67. “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all. – PETER DRUCKER.”

— Ryder Carroll

68. “It’s not about living a perfect life, an easy life, or getting things right all the time. It’s not even about being happy, though joy often greets you along this path. Leading an intentional life is about keeping your actions aligned with your beliefs. It’s about penning a story that you believe in and that you can be proud of.”

— Ryder Carroll

69. “Studies suggest that the act of writing keeps our minds sharper for longer.”

— Ryder Carroll

70. “We need to reduce the number of decisions we burden ourselves with so we can focus on what matters.”

— Ryder Carroll

71. “If we live passive lives, ones where we don’t pursue what shines forth, we remain in the dark, largely ignorant as to our place in the world.”

— Ryder Carroll

72. “Transform any guilt into curiosity by asking yourself why each Task might still be incomplete. Does it matter? Is it vital? What would happen if you didn’t do it?”

— Ryder Carroll

73. “If you know the why, you can live any how. – FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.”

— Ryder Carroll

74. “I was so caught up in my own misery that I forgot a simple truth: As long as our hearts are beating, there is always opportunity.”

— Ryder Carroll

75. “To dare in life is to make yourself vulnerable to the possibility of failure.”

— Ryder Carroll

76. “Our notebook serves as a mental sanctuary where we are free to think, reflect, process, and focus.”

— Ryder Carroll

77. “Toward our latter days, writing can help preserve our most cherished memories. Studies suggest that the act of writing keeps our minds sharper for longer.”

— Ryder Carroll

78. “It provided me with a practical yet forgiving tool to organize my impatient mind.”

— Ryder Carroll

79. “This Collection serves as a menu of sorts, listing your potential futures. It can keep you focused and motivated, but even the greatest menu is useless if you don’t order. the next step is to start nudging yourself toward action. Otherwise it’s easy to hoard goals, waiting for just the right moment to get started. That moment will never come. We have to create our own opportunities, because life doesn’t wait.”

— Ryder Carroll

80. “If happiness is the result of our actions, then we need to stop asking ourselves how to be happy. Rather, we should be asking ourselves how to be.”

— Ryder Carroll

81. “When we believe in what we’re doing, we stop mindlessly clocking in. We become more innovative, creative, and present. We’re not only working harder, but smarter because both our hearts and minds are genuinely engaged by the endeavor.”

— Ryder Carroll

82. “We tend to follow the path of least resistance, even when it leads away from the things we care about.”

— Ryder Carroll

83. “Prioritize the items you feel strongest about or are the most time sensitive, and strike off the items you feel “meh” about. We’re not here to design a lukewarm life.”

— Ryder Carroll

84. “No. You’ve got it wrong, Mike. Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top five.”

— Ryder Carroll

85. “We burn through a lot of resources obsessing over possible outcomes and forming contingency plans, but in reality we’re just fueling our anxiety.”

— Ryder Carroll

86. “The Bullet Journal is designed to be your “source of truth.”

— Ryder Carroll

87. “Though it can be helpful to set an intention for the day, like Today I will not complain, it’s important to remember not to set an expectation for your day, because that’s out of your control.”

— Ryder Carroll

88. “Writing down Tasks serves a dual purpose. First, having a record of an open task makes it easier to remember even when you’re away from your journal, partly due to a phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect.”

— Ryder Carroll

89. “He realized that he loved making to-do lists, and he loved knocking out tasks even more.”

— Ryder Carroll

90. “Of all the challenges you’ll face along the way, endurance often proves to be the most cunning and lethal adversary. Big goals therefore must be fueled by an authentic need that will help you weather the days, months, or even years it takes to fulfill them. That need must be strong enough to fortify you against the siren songs of distraction, excuses, and doubt that will beckon you toward the rocks.”

— Ryder Carroll

91. “By recording our lives, we’re simultaneously creating a rich archive of our choices and our actions for future reference. We can study our mistakes and learn from.”

— Ryder Carroll

92. “Embracing our imperfection puts the emphasis back where it should be: continual improvement.”

— Ryder Carroll

93. “You can track the decisions you’ve made, and the actions you’ve taken that led you to where you are. It encourages you to learn from your experiences. What worked, what did not, how did it make you feel, what’s the next move?”

— Ryder Carroll

94. “It’s a fusion of philosophies from a variety of traditions that define how to live an intentional life – a life both productive and purposeful.”

— Ryder Carroll

95. “Change is critical to productivity and growth – personal, professional, or otherwise. It can be a powerful way to alter our circumstances, but it can backfire. Large changes trigger our fear response. The more afraid we are, the more we need to calm ourselves. Many a great productive gesture or action has resulted in an equal or greater measure of inactivity. Peaks where we believe anything is possible are followed by shadowed valleys where we think maybe nothing is.”

— Ryder Carroll

96. “Big goals therefore must be fueled by an authentic need that will help you weather the days, months, or even years it takes to fulfill them.”

— Ryder Carroll

97. “As we begin to identify the things we’re drawn to, we can start properly defining our dreams, based on what we actually believe in.”

— Ryder Carroll

98. “Writing by hand helps us think and feel simultaneously.”

— Ryder Carroll

99. “In a cut-and-paste world that celebrates speed, we often mistake convenience for efficiency.”

— Ryder Carroll

100. “Intentionality is the power of the mind to direct itself toward that which it finds meaningful and take action toward that end.”

— Ryder Carroll