Making Ideas Happen Quotes

“An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Most ideas are born and lost in isolation.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“You can't rely on others—especially your managers and clients—to engage your strengths. In an ideal world, managers would constantly be thinking about how to best utilize their people—and clients would always unearth your greatest potential. Unfortunately, the reality is that bosses and clients are as worried about their own careers as you are about your own. You must take the task of marketing your strengths into your own hands.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Today never feels like it will be history, but it will. And more likely than not, you will look back and realize that you should have known.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Self-leadership is about awareness, tolerance , and not letting your own natural tendencies limit your potential.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Everything in life should be approached as a project. Every project can be broken down into just three things: Action Steps, Backburner Items, and References.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Constant motion is the key to execution.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Whether it means prizing the value of lessons learned, building games into your creative process, or getting gifts upon certain milestones of achievement, self-derived rewards make a big difference…You cannot ignore or completely escape the deeply ingrained short-term reward system within you. But you can become aware of what really motivates you and then tweak your incentives to sustain your long-term pursuits.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“The rewards system of the traditional workplace keeps us on track, in line with deadlines from the higher-ups. If we adhere to it, the deeply embedded rewards system of our adult lives is likely to keep s employed and secure within the status quo. . . However, these tendencies become destructive as soon as we begin to pursue long-term goals or attempt something extraordinary”
― scott belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“elevate true productivity over the appearance of hard work.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“We will ultimately live in a perpetual data-driven talent edition. Everything you create will be measured and tracked by others through comments, share, and likes. Your work will come up on the radar of potential employers and clients, and the data will tell them if you are worth talking to or hiring.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Our ability to extinguish new ideas is critical to productivity and to our capacity to scale existing projects. In a team setting, the skeptics—the ones who always question ideas first rather than falling in love with them—are the white blood cells.”
― Belsky, Scott, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“All great inventions emerge from a long sequence of small sparks; the first idea often isn’t all that good, but thanks to collaboration it later sparks another idea, or it’s reinterpreted in an unexpected way. Collaboration brings small sparks together to generate breakthrough innovation.”
― Belsky, Scott, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“When 99% of people doubt your idea, you're either gravely wrong or about to make history.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“IDEAS DON’T HAPPEN”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“In other words, the aesthetics of the tools you use to make ideas happen matter.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Brainstorming should start with a question and the goal of capturing something specific, relevant, and actionable.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“organization is a major force for making ideas happen.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“organization is the guiding force of productivity: if you want to make an idea happen, you need to have a process for doing so.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“an idea executed for an audience of one is an awful waste of potential inspiration and value for the greater good.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Most ideas get lost in what I call the “project plateau,” a period of intense execution where your natural creative tendencies turn against you.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Roger Berkowitz, CEO of Legal Sea Foods—a $215-million company with over four thousand employees—explained in an interview with Inc. magazine how his work style depends on the forces of nagging. “People who want me to do something . . . have to remind me repeatedly,” he explained. “It’s management by being nagged.” The reliance on—and even the encouragement of—nagging may at first appear bothersome. It may be annoying to be constantly reminded about something while trying to immerse yourself in a creative project. However, amidst the chaos of meetings and trying to prioritize the elements of multiple projects, nagging from others helps you prioritize by natural selection. When someone is consistently bothering you about something, chances are you have become a bottleneck in the team’s productivity.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Diversity of opinions and circumstances increases the likelihood of ‘happy accidents.’ Serendipity comes from differences.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“We can access our e-mail and schedule from anywhere in the world. In theory, we can always be reached.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“While some of the greatest ideas and solutions come up in meetings, we often fail to connect these ideas to a tangible set of next steps.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“When we don’t want to take action, we find reasons to wait. We use “waiting” nicknames like “awaiting approval,” “following procedures,” “further research,” or “consensus building.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“A surplus of ideas is as dangerous as a drought. The tendency to jump from idea to idea to idea spreads your energy horizontally rather than vertically. As a result, you’ll struggle to make progress.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“a methodology is only effective when it is practiced consistently.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“The hyperconnectivity made possible by the Internet has acted as a massive accelerator for the “small sparks” that fuel the refinement of ideas.”
― Belsky, Scott, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality