The Collaborative Habit Quotes

“In the end all collaborations are love stories.”
― Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

“Don’t sign on for more problems than you must. Resist the temptation to involve yourself in other people’s zones of expertise and responsibility. Monitor troublesome situations if you need to, but don’t insert yourself unless you’re running out of time and a solution is nowhere in sight. In short, stifle your inner control freak.”
― Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

“I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster.”
― Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

“Like creativity, collaboration is a habit—and one I encourage you to develop.”
― Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

“Michelangelo is celebrated for the Sistine Chapel; in fact, he supervised a dozen unacknowledged assistants. Even one of the greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, chose to deflect credit for his compositions, writing at the bottom of each of his pieces “SDG,” for Soli Deo Gloria—to God alone the glory. By”
― Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

“By the twentieth century, only a few self-isolated sects practiced the collaborative tradition. Blame it on wars that killed millions, the atomic bomb, Freud, or any combination of factors you choose—there’s no shortage of reasons. The result is that most of us grew up in a culture that applauded only individual achievement. We are, each of us, generals in an ego-driven “army of one,” each the center of an absurd cosmos, taking such happiness as we can find. Collaboration? Why bother? You only live once; grab whatever you can. But”
― Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together

“Collaboration is how most of our ancestors used to work and live, before machines came along and fragmented society. Time to plant the fields? Everybody pitched in and got it done. Harvesttime? The community raced to get the crops in before the rains came. Where were those crops stored? In barns built by teams of neighbors. In the cities, the same spirit applied. Anonymous craftsmen spent their lives building cathedrals that wouldn’t be completed for generations.”
― Twyla Tharp, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together