A Quote by John Kenneth Galbraith
One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.
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The best advice I ever received is that there is a difference between urgency and importance: Urgent tasks seem important, but they're not. Important things need to get done.
The important task rarely must be done today, or even this week...But the urgent task calls for instant action...The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time's perspective, their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the vital tasks we pushed aside. We realize we've become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.
I always try to do the most important or urgent tasks first, I avoid waiting till the last minute to finish things, and I value my time. I work smarter by valuing my time and doing the things that can't be done without me while hiring a great team around me to do the rest of the things.
Even while we busily attend meetings, contribute money and perform our assigned tasks, we suspect that we may be helping to create a force that is inimical to many values we hold dear.
To confine soldiers to purely military functions while urgent and vital tasks have to be done, and nobody else is available to undertake them, would be senseless. The soldier must then be prepared to become a propagandist, a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout. But only for as long as he cannot be replaced, for it is better to entrust civilian tasks to civilians.
My soul is more at rest from the tempter when I am busily employed.
We too often let the material things serve as indicators that we're doing well, even though something inside us tells us that were not doing our best. That we are avoiding that which is hard, but also necessary. That we are shrinking from rather than rising to the challenges of the age.
There are so many ways to lose, but so few ways to win. Perhaps the best way to achieve victory is to master all the rules for disaster, and then concentrate on avoiding them.
I don't like the idea of busing children all over the country. It's not safe. And there doesn't seem to be that much of an urgent need for it to be done.
He's convinced most human adults do not know how to play anymore and that playing is one of the best ways to think. Franky finds children, by far, much more pleasant and intelligent than most adults, but they are easily ruined by their families, schools, and society. He says one of the ways they are ruined is by being forced to think of all the tasks that need to be done as work, not as play. It takes the joy out of living.
These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for three or four days busily employed writing an account of our journey for the Governor's information.
It's the great tragedy - people employed in ways that don't fully tap everything they do best in life.
In order to be a winner, you have to look for ways of getting things done and not for reasons why things can’t be done. People who live with excuses have things that can’t be done hovering around them all the time.
And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.
I believe that earning your living doing something you enjoy is one of the very best ways to nourish yourself. But even if you are employed at something that is not your ideal work, it is important to find ways to take as much pleasure in it as possible. Living in the present moment can make ordinary activities more interesting and joyful; you may be surprised, if you only look, at what you will find. If you try to stay connected with why you are doing what you are doing, for example, then even the parts of your life that aren't especially interesting can become more meaningful.
I wish to see the sons and daughters of the world in Peace and busily employed in the more agreeable amusement of fulfilling the first and great commandment, Increase and Multiply : as an encouragement to which we have opened the fertile plains of the Ohio to the poor, the needy and the oppressed of the Earth; any one therefore who is heavy laden, or who wants land to cultivate, may repair thither and abound, as in the Land of promise, with milk and honey: the ways are preparing, and the roads will be made easy, thro' the channels of Potomac and James river.
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