Jesse Itzler Quotes

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Less is more.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

What's really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer.

Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new.

My ultimate goal is to create operating systems for myself that allow me to think as little as possible about the silly decisions you can make all day long - like what to eat or where we should meet - so I can focus on making real decisions. Because mental energy is a finite quantity.

I'm not very good at multi-tasking. Most people aren't, but they think they are. The mind is really better when you're really focused on one thing.

I really feel that we need to scale back and get to what is important on so many levels.

Going off the grid is always good for me. It's the way that I've started books and finished books and gotten myself out of deadline dooms and things.

One way to organize your thoughts is to tidy up, even if it's in places where it makes no sense at all.

Most people in business and within their personal lives move towards complexity. More To Dos. More projects. More products. More meetings. More possessions. More goals. The best - I suggest to you - move in the opposite direction.

I think of three things, and that's it. Just keep it short and take it outside and swing it left.

You cannot be insightful if you're deluged with information.

If you think about stripping away 80 percent of the things that don't matter and focusing on the the 20 percent that will actually make a difference, I think you'll find great results even in the toughest of situations and the harshest of environments.

The challenging thing from a work perspective is just the range of things on any given day that you're dealing with and making sure you have the head space to really be giving them the thought and consideration you'd like, too.

You have to ruthlessly prioritize.

A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with-that's poverty-but how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When you're clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it's clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar. (148)

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential.

Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much as it is, you need to be unburdened of it. And you go on collecting it as if it is something precious. Talk less, listen only to the essential, be telegraphic in talking and listening. If you talk less, if you listen less, slowly slowly you will see that a cleanliness, a feeling of purity, as if you have just taken a bath, will start arising within you. That becomes the necessary soil for meditation to arise. Don't go on reading all kinds of nonsense.

... and you can only have 2 or 3 things everyday, because everything else will just come at you; you know fires in a day.

You must distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. You could accomplish all of the urgent things that you desire without accomplishing anything that is important.

Most of what we say and do is unnecessary: remove the superfluity, and you will have more time and less bother. So in every case one should prompt oneself: 'Is this, or is it not, something necessary?' And the removal of the unnecessary should apply not only to actions but to thoughts also: then no redundant actions either will follow.