D. J. MacHale Quotes

I guess we guess our way through life. How many times do we really know for sure?

I do not feel certain until I have confronted my initial solution with other solutions - although in fact the first solution often proves to be the right one.

Don't listen to anybody. Nobody knows the magic bullet. If they did, they'd sell it and make a fortune. Follow your gut. Follow your instincts. Every once in a while, take a chance.

It's kind of an intuitive process. I wish that it were more systematic, but it just isn't.

I have decided many a stylistic problem first by my head, then by heads or tails.

I teach something called The Law of Probabilities, which says the more things you try, the more likely one of them will work. The more books you read, the more likely one of them will have an answer to a question that could solve the major problems of your life.. make you wealthier, solve a health problem, whatever it might be.

What I've found is there is no barometer that allows you to chart when you're oversaturating a desire. You're left really trying to respond on a gut level, because by the time you might do research, it's already too late. There's also a healthy tension between what are very sound business objectives and a very amorphous desire to preserve what's special.

As intuition grows, the need to make problems and see complications starts to dwindle.

If there's a big problem and you've got the right people with you, usually the answer emerges and you do what's the obvious thing to do. I don't think of myself as some great manager or great leader. I've been very lucky to be in the positions that I've been in. I meet a lot of people and I've grown a lot of companies, and I meet a lot of CEOs at big enterprises. I'm always so surprised at how much they seem to know. It doesn't always seem to be correlated to how well they actually do.

You can read all the books you want, watch all the movies and get all of the advice, but until you're actually in directing, in the hot seat, that's when you find out what you're made of. Also, you just learn so much from doing.

Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.

Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss up.

I shall always consider the best guesser the best prophet.

If a man is both wise and lucky, he will not make the same mistake twice. But he will make any one of ten thousand brothers or cousins of the original.

We do not need, and indeed never will have, all the answers before we act ... It is often through taking action that we can discover some of them.

How many situations can be resolved with less thinking?

Eventually, I decided that thinking was not getting me very far and it was time to try building.

Think I'll flip a coin, I'm a winner either way Mmmmmm, I feel lucky today

Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

When you don't know what to do, try something; if that doesn't work, try something else.

Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

To guess what to keep and what to throw away takes considerable skill. Actually it is probably merely a matter of luck, but it looks as if it takes considerable skill.

I engage and after that I see what to do.