Top 100 Mckeown Quotes
#1. The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away-it can only be forgotten.
Greg McKeown
#2. I wanted to touch on the piece where often politicians use "god" to excuse their actions.
Erin McKeown
#3. For most people, it is better to lean towards action rather than inaction.
Max McKeown
#4. Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.
Max McKeown
#5. There should be no shame in admitting to a mistake; after all, we really are only admitting that we are now wiser than we once were.
Greg McKeown
#6. If you change the rules of the market, you can be more successful than your competitors.
Max McKeown
#7. I learned how to have a little bit of distance when I explained songs and a little bit of distance when I wrote them. I think this is more interesting any way in art.
Erin McKeown
#8. To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically,
Greg McKeown
#9. The life of an Essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live.
Greg McKeown
#10. If traditional doesn't work, then traditions won't do.
Max McKeown
#11. Your life is what happens when you're busy trying to become unbusy.
Max McKeown
#13. Innovation is about practical creativity - it's about making new ideas useful ...
Max McKeown
#14. The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the organization to achieve them. So part of the risk is created by the strategy.
Max McKeown
#15. As I've gotten older, I have gotten a lot better at finding the pleasures of making music despite the business of it.
Erin McKeown
#16. As an innovator, you need to be aware of how traditions, habits and bias can act as barriers to accepting new ideas.
Max McKeown
#17. If there are no new ideas, there is no innovation. And if there is no creativity, there are no new ideas.
Max McKeown
#18. The only really weird part for me was making sense of the person on the TV at the same time as the person who I am friendly with and do something so friend-intimate with as text.
Erin McKeown
#19. Innovation is new stuff that is made useful.
Max McKeown
#20. As a listener, I like a wide range of sounds.
Erin McKeown
#21. With a clever strategy, each action is self-reinforcing. Each action creates more options that are mutually beneficial. Each victory is not just for today but for tomorrow.
Max McKeown
#22. The ancient Greeks had two words for time. The first was chronos. The second was kairos. The
Greg McKeown
#24. You have to learn to see the gold in dirt, which means that you try to spot people with potential as well as ideas that have potential.
Max McKeown
#25. All we've got is Now. Life, composed of a billion moments, from our first to our last thoughts.
Max McKeown
#26. The psychology of individual creativity is about at least three different things. First, creativity is about thinking differently. Second, creativity is about feeling differently. Third, creativity is about focusing, or committing, differently.
Max McKeown
#27. Who's more likely to succeed - someone with high skill and no ambition, or no skill and high ambition? If you're an entrepreneur, you can hire as many skilled people for your business as you want.
Max McKeown
#28. I like garage band for writing because you only have crayons and there are only five crayons in the box. Your choices are limited and I find that to be very good for me.
Erin McKeown
#29. I think we are in a non-essentialist bubble - everything seems important - so of course nothing is.
Greg McKeown
#31. The Greek word for "rooster" is built from combined parts that mean "getter out of bed".
J.C. McKeown
#32. My approach to writing and recording now is pretty much the same as when I started. Except now I worry even less about what people will think of what I made. And I am not drunk.
Erin McKeown
#33. Before innovation - or practical creativity - there is insight. You must see the world differently.
Max McKeown
#34. There are immense numbers of potential entrepreneurs who can start their own businesses among the people who are working in large organisations.
Max McKeown
#35. Change is inevitable, progress is not.
Max McKeown
#36. Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.
Max McKeown
#37. The true parents of creativity are curiosity and necessity.
Max McKeown
#38. When I'm recording something (especially because I produce my own music) I might consider how hard it would be to replicate a song on stage.
Erin McKeown
#39. Strategy was first used in Athens (508 BC) to describe the art of leadership used by the ten generals on the war council. Some argue for the more creative, human side, while others argue for the more analytic side of strategy.
Max McKeown
#40. Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means.
Max McKeown
#41. I always write from rhythm first, so if I need a song fast, I have to start there. Then I just threw some electric guitar at it.
Erin McKeown
#42. Research has shown that of all forms of human motivation the most effective one is progress. Why? Because a small, concrete win creates momentum and affirms our faith in our further success.
Greg McKeown
#43. Take a deep breath. Get present in the moment and ask yourself what is important this very second.
Greg McKeown
#44. A great strategy meeting is a meeting of minds.
Max McKeown
#45. Done right, a strategic intent is really one decision that makes 1,000 decisions.
Greg McKeown
#46. As a consumer of culture, I like a wide range of emotions to be touched in art. It's funny but on the other side of it, I do feel that people that are trying to sell culture would like to see a narrower range of expression from their content-makers. Easier to sell I guess.
Erin McKeown
#48. Mostly, the people in "the room" are paid lobbyists representing interests that could afford to pay them. No wonder policy isn't being made that helps smaller, independent musicians or those unaffiliated with a larger entity.
Erin McKeown
#49. Remember that if you don't prioritize your life someone else will.
Greg McKeown
#50. I think I have come across as "unafraid" because I really cannot control what comes through me in my writing.
Erin McKeown
#51. Beware the lessons of a fighter pilot who would rather fly a slide rule than kick your ass!
Ron McKeown
#52. Change is not overcoming inertia as much as it is redirecting, guiding, tweaking what already is and what has already happened. We must believe that we can make choices and that those choices can alter the future.
Max McKeown
#53. There are three types of student: The golden student pays and loans, the silver student pays but does not learn, the bronze student learns but does not pay.
J.C. McKeown
#54. I think we've been oversold the value of more and undersold the value of less.
Greg McKeown
#55. I started to understand what the song could be about. The ache of nostalgia even for things we don't like, the commitment to keep moving despite that ache. It made me think of how I relate to my privilege - as a white person, as someone who grew up upper middle class.
Erin McKeown
#56. One of the best ways to seed an opportunity is to allow someone to discover the opportunity for him- or herself.
Greg McKeown
#57. Innovation is deviance which means that the rebellious personality is a natural resource for practical creativity. As an innovator, you need to reject the old to establish a new, better, status quo. And one of the most powerful sources of newness is the rebel or maverick, mind.
Max McKeown
#58. Culture is the sum of the values, beliefs and assumptions of human groups.
Max McKeown
#59. Entrepreneurs are like cats, because they are independent and do their own thing. Although organisations say they like cats, what they really want is sheep that they can herd.
Max McKeown
#60. Nowists are more likely to experience joy because they embrace the uncertainty of existence. They are switched on by the uncertain stuff of human life and come alive when faced with life at its most uncontrollable.
Max McKeown
#61. I am really pleased to hear each of my songs described as a total surprise. This is what I want!
Erin McKeown
#62. I'd rather be honest and lose than be dishonest and win
Greg McKeown
#63. At the point that an idea approaches perfection, fashion and expectations surge ahead, leaving the innovator with considerable room to find further improvements.
Max McKeown
#64. It's funny because my main awkwardness around writing the song had little to do with the method.
Erin McKeown
#65. We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage ...
Max McKeown
#66. Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft in their book Make Space,
Greg McKeown
#67. I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn't enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered.
Greg McKeown
#68. Strategy is not a solo sport, even if you're the CEO.
Max McKeown
#69. The real heart of strategy is the strategist.
Max McKeown
#70. Entrepreneurs don't believe the future is predictable - but they do believe that they can create the future themselves.
Max McKeown
#71. Pushing your limits is what allows you to grow stronger, so if you find yourself feeling passive, it can make sense to dial it up a little. Get moving. Accomplish something small. Do something you enjoy. Embrace what moves you. And start again.
Max McKeown
#72. Following the rules of your industry will only get you so far.
Max McKeown
#73. All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.
Max McKeown
#74. I didn't realize at the time that if I wrote about something, I was going to have to talk about something. A lot. Ad nauseum.
Erin McKeown
#75. When I began writing songs, there was a pretty direct line between what was happening in my life and what I wrote about. So my first album was really all about my failed attempts to make a particular relationship work.
Erin McKeown
#76. It would have been easy to think of the jobs in terms of that ratio between time and reward. But I knew what really counted was the relationship between time and results.
Greg McKeown
#77. Really, everything for me comes from "Manifestra." It was an incredible gift of a song; it really describes an important moment in my life.
Erin McKeown
#78. Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash 'for fun'. Even today, Facebook believe that 'done is better than perfect'.
Max McKeown
#79. Dont be a life spectator.. take the plunge.
Max McKeown
#80. Strategy and culture should have breakfast together.
Max McKeown
#81. ...as all ranks of people, without respect of religion, seem resolute to defend the sacred person of their sovereign and the laws and liberties of this country, against all foreign invadors...
Adam N. McKeown
#82. Whenever a maker and a thinker get together, really cool stuff happens.
Max McKeown
#83. What are you doing at the moment? How does that compare to your competitors? What do you want to achieve? How can you create something people want?
Max McKeown
#84. The least successful athletes, those who have never won any victories, suddenly call themselves trainers.
J.C. McKeown
#85. So many policy decisions that effect musicians are being made without any input from musicians at all.
Erin McKeown
#86. The laws are like spiders' webs: just as spiders' webs catch the weaker creatures but let the stronger ones through, so the humble and poor are restricted by the laws, but the rich and powerful are not bound by them (Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Sayings 7.2 ext. 14).
J.C. McKeown
#87. Plug into the anti-obvious power of the rebel. Or get those opposing minds to plug into your purpose, to solve your problem, to reimagine your process.
Max McKeown
#88. The task of the strategist and leadership team is to reduce uncertainty in the areas that they can directly influence in order to pursue attractively difficult objectives.
Max McKeown
#89. Our need for innovation has shifted power closer to the source of that power-Us. We are the future.
Max McKeown
#90. We often think of choice as a thing. But a choice is not a thing. Our options may be things, but a choice - a choice is an action. It is not just something we have but something we do.
Greg McKeown
#91. by abolishing any chance of being bored we have also lost the time we used to have to think and process.
Greg McKeown
#92. Discern the vital few from the trivial Many.
Greg McKeown
#93. Innovation can start with wanting what does not yet exist - and finding a solution - or seeing what does not yet exist - and finding an opportunity.
Max McKeown
#94. Problem-insight precedes solution insight. Someone has to recognise a problem before they start to solve the problem ...
Max McKeown
#95. As John Maxwell has written, "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."9
Greg McKeown
#96. Corporate strategy is usually only useful if you get people engaged with helping you to make it work.
Max McKeown
#97. If I didn't already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?
Greg McKeown
#98. Play stimulates the parts of the brain involved in both careful, logical reasoning and carefree, unbound exploration.
Greg McKeown
#99. Efficient breathing means that fewer free radicals are produced, reducing the risk of inflammation, tissue damage, and injury. Free
Patrick McKeown
#100. The word priority was singular for 500 years - what does priorities mean - 'many many first things.'
Greg McKeown
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