Tasks Quotes - Page 36

• When we strike a balance between the challenge of an activity and our skill at performing it, when the rhythm of the work itself feels in sync with our pulse, when we know that what we're doing matters, we can get totally absorbed in our task. That is happiness.

  Ariel Gore

  Skills, Challenges, Balance

  Ariel Gore (2010). “Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness”, p.123, Macmillan

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• We all need the living green or we'll shrivel up inside. To make the modern city livable is the task of our times.

  Jens Jensen

  Cities, Needs, Development

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• Pessimism like calumny is easy to do, and attracts immediate attention. The gossiper and the writer may find this out soon enough, and a little encouragement from the current mood will procure them successes that bring endless imitators in their trail. On the other hand saying good things about life in general and individuals in particular and making it interesting is a serious task which few can achieve with credit.

  Bernard Berenson

  Encouragement, Hands, Calumny Is

  Bernard Berenson (1963). “Sunset and Twilight: From the Diaries of 1947-1958”, New York : Harcourt, Brace & World

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• There are lots of examples of routine, middle-skilled jobs that involve relatively structured tasks, and those are the jobs that are being eliminated the fastest. Those kinds of jobs are easier for our friends in the artificial intelligence community to design robots to handle them. They could be software robots; they could be physical robots.

  Erik Brynjolfsson

  Jobs, Community, Design

  "Are robots hurting job growth?". "March of the Machines" with Steve Kroft, www.cbsnews.com. January 13, 2013.

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• As Buddhists, our only task is to keep our room clean.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhist, Rooms, Clean

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• Scientists used to do an experiment whereby a dog's repeated reward for performing a task was unaccountably replaced by punishment. The dog, knowing it would be penalized for doing well or doing badly, would become melancholic and inactive. This and other unforeseeable results were funded by taxing up to sixty percent of people's earnings. People became strangely melancholic and inactive

  Steve Aylett

  Dog, Punishment, Knowing

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• Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

  Jakob Nielsen

  Documentation, May, Information

  Jakob Nielsen (1994). “Usability Engineering”, p.20, Elsevier

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• Juggling is an illusion. ... In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession. ... It is actually task switching.

  Gary W. Keller

  Reality, Balls, Illusion

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• Task switching exacts a cost few realize they are even paying.

  Gary W. Keller

  Cost, Realizing, Switching

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• All translating seems to me to be simply an attempt to accomplish an impossible task.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Impossible, Accomplish, Translate

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• Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Years, Ignorant, Atheism

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.484, Library of Alexandria

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• The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Strong, Hard Work, Leader

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• Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.

  Clay Shirky

  Thinking, Gym Rats, Facts

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• We really have no choice but to pray and encourage a return to an America steeped in Judeo-Christian values. It is either that or taking our chances in a society with no values at all. For all Americans the former carries certain risks, but the latter spells certain doom. For now, we should not be deflected by theological debate from the life-saving tasks awaiting us. There is work to be done. We must ensure that America will continue to be part of God's plan for the world.

  Daniel Lapin

  Christian, America, Choices

  Rabbi Daniel Lapin (2012). “America's Real War”, p.526, Multnomah

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• The lowest stress environment is the radio show. I am not on camera and I can let the music do the talking. The rest is more highly pressurized or in the case of writing, time intensive task. I say yes to all of it and like all of it but the radio show, by nature of what it is, is the least hassle.

  Henry Rollins

  Stress, Writing, Talking

  Source: www.pmakid.com

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• I try to work hard. I'm really proud of what I get to do as a living. I still pinch myself. But I also know it's a craft, and I can get better at it and learn every time I do it. So I try to work hard no matter what the task is.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Hard Work, Get Better, Trying

  "Benedict Cumberbatch on ‘The Imitation Game’ and making Alan Turing less of an enigma". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. November 28, 2014.

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• I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.

  Ashton Kutcher

  Thinking, Self, Giving

  "The Guardian - Ashton Kutcher interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding . . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.

  Annie Dillard

  Strong, Rip, Fire

  Annie Dillard (1994). “The Annie Dillard reader”, Harpercollins

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• Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
  That every man in arms should wish to be?
  It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
  Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
  Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
  Whose high endeavors are an inward light
  That makes the path before him always bright:
  Who, with a natural instinct to discern
  What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
  And in himself posses his own desire

  William Wordsworth

  Happiness, Real, Warrior

  'Character of the Happy Warrior' (1807)

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• All too often we say of a man doing a good job that he is indispensable. A flattering canard, as so many disillusioned and retired and fired have discovered when the world seems to keep on turning without them. In business, a man can come nearest to indispensability by being dispensable in his current job. How can a man move up to new responsibilities if he is the only one able to handle his present tasks? It matters not how small or large the job you now have, if you have trained no one to do it as well, you're not available; you've made your promotion difficult if not impossible.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Jobs, Moving, Responsibility

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• The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.

  Gail Sheehy

  Letting Go, Self, Safety

  Gail Sheehy (1977). “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life”, Bantam

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• The task of man is not to discover new worlds, but to discover his own world in terms of human comprehension and beauty.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Beauty, Men, World

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• To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers.

  Frank Herbert

  Wise, Men, May

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Dune Messiah”, p.99, Penguin

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• The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life so that one may live fully and comfortably within one's daily budget of 24 hours is the calm realization of the extreme difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort which it demands.

  Arnold Bennett

  Life, Sacrifice, Effort

  Arnold Bennett (2006). “How to Live on 24 Hours a Day”, p.19, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• On the theory of the soul's mortality, the inferiority of women's capacity is easily accounted for: Their domestic life requires no higher faculties either of mind or body. This circumstance vanishes and becomes absolutely insignificant, on the religious theory: The one sex has an equal task to perform as the other: Their powers of reason and resolution ought also to have been equal, and both of them infinitely greater than at present.

  David Hume

  Religious, Sex, Women

  David Hume, Richard H. Popkin (1998). “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Second Edition)”, p.93, Hackett Publishing

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