Tempo Quotes

“for every complex question, there is an answer that is simple, elegant and wrong.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“beliefs create or constrain possibilities, desires lead to preferences among them, and intentions represent commitments to specific courses of action. Each of the primitive elements can evolve in time, which is why mental models have momentum.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“The process of planning is very valuable, for forcing you to think hard about what you are doing, but the actual plan that results from it is probably useless.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“Your most stable beliefs, the ones that actually modulate your behavior, aren’t about life purposes; they are about momentum management. You are more likely to switch religions than to switch from an impatient to a patient temperament.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“learning helps us increase our store of usable information and lower risk.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“As writers like to remark, books are never finished, they are merely abandoned. This acceptance of necessary expediency leads to the increasing doubt and anxiety characteristic of the last hours before the first significant encounter with reality: the separation event.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“What critics miss, however, is that there is no such thing as non-narrative thought, free of possible worlds and ongoing enactments. There are always multiple narratives at work, framing our perceptions, memories, active thoughts, decisions and actions.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

“Work is simply whatever we must do to get from one decision to the next.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making