Die Empty Quotes

“We need to fall in love with the process, not just the end product of our work.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Passion” has its roots in the Latin word pati, which means “to suffer or endure.” Therefore, at the root of passion is suffering. This is a far cry from the way we casually toss around the word in our day-to-day conversations. Instead of asking “What would bring me enjoyment?” which is how many people think about following their passion, we should instead ask “What work am I willing to suffer for today?” Great work requires suffering for something beyond yourself. It’s created when you bend your life around a mission and spend yourself on something you deem worthy of your best effort. What is your worthwhile cause?”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“The most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. In the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, never-launched businesses, unreconciled relationships, and all of the other things that people thought, ‘I’ll get around to that tomorrow.’ One day, however, their tomorrows ran”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Make sure that you’re nurturing your process. It’s the only thing you can truly control, and it’s the thing you’ll always have regardless of where you end up.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Great work results when you stop doing only what you know you can do and instead begin pursuing what you believe you might be able to do with a little focused effort.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“The great problems we see in the world today will not be solved by people functioning at half capacity cranking out work they don't care about in order to buy more things that will eventually rust and rot.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Intellectual growth results not from the accumulation of tidbits of information, but from considering and integrating it.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“When people begin to experience the lull of mediocrity, they often question whether they are in the right job. They wonder if there might be another one out there that would better suit them, and that might give them the thrill they once experienced before things went south. They may even act on that impulse, hopping to another job or company, and subsequently find that everything is better for a while. The newness is back, and that craved-for sense of challenge has returned. Problem solved? Actually, no. In many of these situations the job hopper is right back in crisis within a matter of months. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with their new job; it’s because they changed their external situation without changing their mind-set and methods. They were trying to solve an internal problem by changing their external circumstances, which rarely works. You have to begin by finding alignment internally, then question your work environment.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Overtime we learn the art of compromise. The problem is we often compromise the most valuable thing: the fire that drives our best work.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Emptying yourself of your best work isn’t just about checking off tasks on your to-do list; it’s about making steady, critical progress each day on the projects that matter, in all areas of life.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Nobody wins when you shape the truth to make it more palatable.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them. —OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, THE VOICELESS”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Great work, like a healthy financial portfolio, takes time to mature.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Of course, it’s easy to confuse progress with effectiveness. All progress is not true progress. It’s possible to gain ground for many days, weeks, months, or even years but be going in a completely wrong direction. That’s why it’s important to have mechanisms in your life to help you decide whether your efforts are, in fact, helping you advance on your goals, or just feeding your need for forward motion.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet. —JAMES OPPENHEIM”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“drive for show, putt for dough.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Decisions part the fog on stagnant waters. Cowardice kills us.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Failure doesn’t always mean defeat; it only means that you fell short of accomplishing your objective.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Die Empty. I want to know that if I lay my head down tonight and don’t wake up tomorrow, I have emptied myself of whatever creativity is lingering inside, with minimal regrets about how I spent my focus, time, and energy. This doesn’t happen by accident; it takes intentional and sustained effort. But I can say with confidence from my own experience and the experiences of others I’ve worked with that the effort is well worth it.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“This means dedicating yourself to the pursuit of new and better questions, attuning your mind to dive deeply into important problems, and questioning the assumptions that sometimes limit fresh new perspectives.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. —HENRY MILLER”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“One of my first gifts to our first son was the book Oh, the Places You Will Go by Dr. Seuss. For those not familiar, it’s a book of encouragement for those setting out on the adventure of life.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“The only two approaches to dealing with uncertainty are design and default. When you operate by default, your biology, which is wired for comfort, wins out and you almost always end up squarely in the gray zone.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“our minds don’t always understand the difference between a “good” problem and a “bad” problem,”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“instill consistent practices into your life that keep you on a true and steady course. An ounce of preventative discipline today is worth a pound of corrective action later.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“You can’t lie to the person in the mirror.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“there is always a delay between planting and harvesting.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“Intention and theory don’t change the world; decisive action does.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“How could you surprise someone today with generosity or encouragement?”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day