Thomas Edison on success

The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary.

~ Thomas Edison, inventor

Sam Walton on focus

I have concentrated all along on building the finest retailing company that we possibly could.  Period.  Creating a huge personal fortune was never particularly a goal of mine.

~ Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart

Annie Duke on the value of quitting

Quitting doesn't slow you down, not when it's done well.  It actually speeds you up.  And that's the secret.  People think that "quitters never win and winners never quit," but that's not true.  Winners actually quit a lot and it's in fact how they win.  When you look at the best investors, they are so good at getting off the positions that aren't worthwhile so that they can then reinvest that capital into things that are worthwhile...  That's what's actually going to move the ball forward for you...  When you are a good quitter, you get to where you want to go faster.

~ Annie Duke, interview with Dan Ferris, Stansberry Investor Hour, 51:55 mark, February 27, 2023

Joel Tillinghast on focus

Successful people simplify their lives by focusing on the facts and actions that matter most.  If you don't, you will find yourself either on a hamster wheel or bogged down in trivia.  The trickiest part is staying open to new and contradictory information that affects your goals, while cutting out the clutter.  One test for noise is to ask whether a piece of information will still be useful in a year or two, leaving out plenty of fussy details about quarterly results.

~ Joel Tillinghast, Big Money Thinks Small, p. 61

Brian Chesky on priorities, easy money and discipline

In life, one of the things I learned from the pandemic is you can do anything you want in your life; you just can't do it all at the same time.  You have to have ruthless prioritization.  And one of the pitfalls of tech the last 10 years - especially the last 5 years - is probably a plethora of capital.  Too much money.  And too much money means too many things at the same time.  And so we had to get really disciplined.  We said, "what we need to get focused on is great customer service and getting enough hosts."  And those became our priorities.

~ Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, interview, Bloomberg TV, November 18, 2022

Charles Akre on avoiding distractions

We work in a town with one traffic light...  It makes the decision process so much simpler.  Einstein: "Make things as simple as possible."  We tell people, when they get to the light, turn.  Sooner or later you'll get to us."  What's really important is that in... Central Park South in New York or in downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles, we'd be surrounded by hundreds of people who were very bright and very interesting.  And the reason we're in a town with one traffic light away from that is that their stuff would be intellectually appealing to us and it would distract us from what it is we do well.

~ Charles Akre, "Characteristics of 100 Baggers Stock," 8:35 mark, June 15, 2022

Richard Parsons on business focus

The older you get, the more you come to appreciate the wisdom of the ages.  The old expression “stick to your knitting” provides a broader lesson.  These attempted vertical mergers—where a company acquires a business that is foreign to them, where they don’t have the cultural competence or the technical competence to understand what they’re getting—those usually turn out to be a mistake.

~ Richard Parsons, "Wisdom From the C-Suite," Barron's, July 31, 2021

Henry Ford on focus

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

~ Henry Ford

Christopher Mayer on the need to filter noise when investing

Rule #8: You Need a Really Good Filter

There is a world of noise out there.  The financial media is particularly bad.  Every day, something happens, or so they would have you believe.  They narrate every twist in the market.  They cover every Fed meeting.  They document the endless stream of economic data and reports.  They give a platform for an unending parade of pundits.  Everybody wants to try to call the market, or predict where interest rates will go or the price of oil or whatever.

My own study of 100-baggers shows what a pathetic waste of time this all is.  It's a great distraction in your hunt for 100-baggers.

~ Christopher Mayer, 100 Baggers, p. 183

Thomas Edison on persistence

The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary.

~ Thomas Edison, inventor

Thomas A. Edison
1947

Donald Trump on focus

I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.  That's where the fun is.

~ Donald Trump, businessman

Chris Evert on focus

Ninety percent of my game is mental.  It's my concentration that has gotten me this far.

~ Chris Evert, tennis champion

Samuel Johnson on mental focus

Nothing focuses the mind like an impending hanging.

~ Samuel Johnson