Hugh Prather Quotes

I avoid grandiose plans. I start with a small piece that I can do. I go to the root of the problem and then work around it. It's building brick by brick.

I don't have a magic wand that makes problems disappear.

We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.

You don't have to solve every problem at once.

Remember to dream big, think long-term, underachieve on a daily basis, and take baby steps. That is the key to long-term success.

when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.

We should always be practical, realistic and optimistic.

If you want to make changes in the world, you're going to have to be there day after day doing the boring, straightforward work of getting a couple of people interested and building a slightly bigger organization and carrying out the next move and suffering frustration and finally getting somewhere. That's how the world changes.

We should not anticipate that every time countries come together that we are doing some revolutionary thing. Instead of hitting home runs, sometimes we're going to hit singles.

All of us have problems. We face them every day. How grateful I am that we have difficult things to wrestle with. They keep us young, they keep us alive, they keep us going, they keep us humble. Be grateful for your problems, and know that somehow there will come a solution. Just do the best you can, but be sure it is the very best.

People are irrational. What I want to do is let's take the irrational aspects out of it and let's just break this down. And you and I, let's go and see if we can't master this thing, a few steps at a time without giving up your day job, without having to give up your whole life.

By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. Psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy of the Human Resources Research Organization phrases it simply: 'The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction — how to teach himself. Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.'

Ultimately, every great endeavor consists of many little steps.

My job is not to predict everything that might happen in the future, but to address what we can do today.

Take action every day - some small dose at a time.

If you're running a 26-mile marathon, remember that every mile is run one step at a time. If you are writing a book, do it one page at a time. If you're trying to master a new language, try it one word at a time. There are 365 days in the average year. Divide any project by 365 and you'll find that no job is all that intimidating.

Successful people don't have any fewer problems than unsuccessful people; they just have a different mindset in dealing with them.

Start by thinking of the smallest possible action you could take; then, take it. Then, choose the next smallest action, and do that.

Start moving, a step at a time, step after step. The positive momentum will take you from there.

Take great comfort in knowing that ALL great feats are accomplished one small step at a time.

If you spend a lot of time thinking about your problems, they'll grow bigger and stronger. Is that what you want? Of course not!Instead, focus on your goals. Start your day with them at the front of your mind, and use notes to recall them strategically throughout your day.

Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, 'Oh, this pace is terrible!' But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

The value of a company is the sum of the problems you solve.

It would be an inconvenient rule if nothing could be done until everything can be done.