The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that's the hardest phase.

Your problem is, you're trying to understand it. You need to just do it.

That is the most difficult thing of all. It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself correctly, then you are truly a man of wisdom.

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

Do you know what I have been involuntarily thinking, that in the first period of an artist’s life, one unconsciously makes it very hard for oneself – by a feeling of not being able to master the work – by an uncertainty as to whether one will ever master it – by a great ambition to make progress, but a lack of self-confidence – one cannot banish a certain feeling of agitation, and one hurries oneself though one doesn’t like to be hurried . . .
This cannot be helped, and it is a time which one must go through, and which in my opinion cannot and should not be otherwise.

The most difficult thing about Time, I have learned, is doing it.

Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional “train wreck” you have just been in. It’s

Your life’s course should not be determined by doing what’s safe and easy but by reaching for what’s challenging and hard: the classes that seem impossible on the first day, but you study enough to pass … the jobs you’re not quite qualified for, but you work like crazy to acquire the skills … the moments when you feel alone and overwhelmed, but you are brave enough to ask for help.

Do extremely difficult work.

That seems obvious, right? If you do something that's valued but scarce because it's difficult, you're more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do.

The implication is stunning, though: When designing a project or developing a skill, seek out the most difficult parts to master and contribute. If it's easy, it's not for you.

I’ve discovered that the greatest challenges in defining your work are (1) to think about what you’re doing and (2) to do something about what you’re thinking.

One of the greatest problems people have with failure is that they are too quick to judge isolated situations in their lives and label them as failures. Instead, they need to keep the bigger picture in mind.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

It will be very hard. You’ll make a million mistakes, and you’ll pay for them all, one way or another. But the hard parts will be your parts, they won’t be hard parts other people have imposed on you for their own reasons, or maybe for no reason at all. And your ownership of them – your responsibility to and for them – makes all the difference in the world.

During the first couple years I worked for myself, entire weeks would go by without my accomplishing much, for no other reason than that I was anxious and stressed about what I had to do, and it was too easy to put everything off. I quickly learned, though, that forcing myself to do something, even the most menial of tasks, quickly made the larger tasks seem much easier. If I had to redesign an entire website, I’d force myself to sit down and would say, “Okay, I’ll just design the header right now.” But after the header was done, I’d find myself moving on to other parts of the site. And before I knew it, I’d be energized and engaged in the project.