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Sentences about doing the work, and about which work to do.

118 essays, 2010–2026

Six colleagues work around a polished meeting table with laptops and papers

This is the largest section, and the one where the sayings disagree most. Mark Zuckerberg’s motto for Facebook’s engineers treats broken things as the price of moving fast, while Alan Kay asks that simple things stay simple. Jack Ma turns up twice with advice for a small company, to chase one rabbit at a time and to rely on brains over strength. Caterina Fake puts choosing the right work ahead of working hard.

Many of these lines rank action above ideas. Scott Belsky says the ideas count for less than making them happen, Paul Graham tells founders to build what they would use themselves today, and a line credited to Thomas Edison holds that an idea is worth what it is used for. That ordering is right more often than not, though plenty of companies were sunk by the idea and not the doing.

Other pages take on the mood of the work: Paul Graham comparing startup life with a job at a large company, Ingvar Kamprad warning against the feeling of having arrived, and Steve Jobs on doing work you believe is great.

Most read in Execution

2026 1 essay

  1. Doing things that don't scaleThe famous line is a list of chores in disguise. The chores work while they point at a product that can carry the load once the founder steps away.Paul Graham

2011 82 essays

  1. The feeling of being finished is the thing to watchThe IKEA founder built a company on the idea that nothing was ever finished. The same habit, kept too strictly, takes the satisfaction out of work that people need.Ingvar Kamprad
  2. The hard part is letting go of the old ideaInstant photography came from questioning an assumption the whole industry shared. Decades later, the company it built struggled to question its own.Edwin Land
  3. An idea earns its value when someone uses itEdison's reputation rests on turning known ideas into working systems. The line credited to him is sound advice for founders and a poor rule for research.Thomas Edison
  4. What gets measured and watched gets better, mostlyThe Go Daddy founder put it on a list of rules for business. The mechanism is real, and so is the way it turns against a team that watches the wrong number.Bob Parsons
  5. Small companies win with attention, not muscleHow Taobao beat eBay in China, and why the same story shows the limits of cleverness without capital.Jack Ma
  6. Working alone, the day starts with one choiceFor a solo founder, prioritizing is the job, and it happens again every morning.Noah Everett
  7. Punches you can see coming beat the slow kindA joke about two kinds of suffering, and why the visible kind is often the easier one to live with.Paul Graham
  8. Ship it, iterate hard, and admit the outcome is a hopeThe most honest word in this advice is “hopefully”. Shipping and iterating improve the odds; they do not guarantee the result.Kyle Bragger
  9. Plans simple enough to change when the world doesIKEA's founder warned that elaborate planning kills companies. His own firm's biggest moves came from responding to problems, not from a plan.Ingvar Kamprad
  10. The best outcomes often looked ridiculous firstAn investor who backed Twitter when it was a punchline has reason to distrust the obvious. The lesson holds for a portfolio in a way it does not for a single company.Fred Wilson
  11. No master plan is a plan, and it needs limitsA company that tests many small bets can follow what works. The same habit, without a limit, becomes an excuse for never committing to anything.Ben Huh
  12. Choose the option the team actually wants to doThreadless grew out of a forum contest two friends ran for fun. Its co-founder's rule for decisions makes sense against that history, up to the point where the necessary work begins.Jake Nickell
  13. Perfect details, and fewer of themThe first half of the rule is a standard of quality. The second half is what makes the standard possible to meet.Jack Dorsey
  14. Loving the work, and the years it can take to find itThe famous advice was told as part of a story about being fired. In that setting it makes a narrower and stronger claim.Steve Jobs
  15. Anyone could sell computers by mail. Few could do it wellDell's company was built on an idea anyone could copy and a way of running it that took rivals years to match. Execution advantages wear down too.Michael Dell
  16. Work on the future product as if it already existsTreating a future product as real turns a forecast into a work plan. It also hides the difference between pieces that exist and pieces that do not.Larry Ellison
  17. Using the fear of failure as fuel without letting it steerCuban has sold two companies and owns a champion basketball team, and says fear of failing still drives him. The useful amount of fear has a ceiling.Mark Cuban
  18. Bootstrapping trades an investor's permission for a customer'sA self-funded company needs no investor's approval to start or to change course. It still answers to customers, cash flow and the founders' own savings.Tom Preston-Werner
  19. Simple answers come at the end of the thinkingA one-line strategy is worth something only when it can refuse a profitable-looking opportunity.Jim Collins
  20. Doing what you love, and waiting for the rest to arriveCrowley's version of this familiar advice took ten years to prove itself. The part that did the work was staying with one problem until the world caught up.Dennis Crowley
  21. Keeping a business going means staying hungryMoonfruit was nearly wiped out in the dot-com crash and rebuilt by its founders. Its co-founder's line is about the years after the first success.Wendy Tan White
  22. Why incumbents rarely crush the small rival, and how they sometimes doLarge companies rarely manage to kill a small competitor by building a rival product. They have two other options, and both appeared in AdMob's own story.Omar Hamoui
  23. Skepticism comes with anything new, so read it carefullyDoubt is guaranteed for anything unprecedented. That is exactly why it carries so little information.Jessica Livingston
  24. Nobody grades the list, only what came off itA to-do list is a private tool. Held up in public, it becomes a way of sounding busy without saying what got done.Ryan Freitas
  25. Running before walking works best with a rebuild budgetThe line belongs to a fictional billionaire with an unlimited workshop. The scene it comes from is a fair lesson anyway, including the landing.Tony Stark
  26. Screwing up as a normal part of decidingA founder who needs every decision to be right will make too few of them. Huffington's own record includes a very public wrong turn.Arianna Huffington
  27. Opportunity often arrives looking like a choreThe line was in American print in the early 1920s under other names. Its point about unglamorous work holds up better than its attribution.Unattributed
  28. Stress at a startup, and the excitement that pays for itThe balance Agarwal describes is real, and it depends on the company moving. When growth stalls, the excitement fades faster than the stress.Sachin Agarwal
  29. A rival's news can be the push a slow launch neededA start-up without a deadline tends to drift. Discovering a competitor is an external deadline, useful if it sharpens priorities and harmful if it replaces them.Rebecca Woodcock
  30. Choosing the work you love, with the rent already paidNot focusing on money is different from ignoring it. The founder of WordPress did the first and never the second.Matt Mullenweg
  31. Experience teaches what theory leaves out, and the reverseDoing a thing shows the parts nobody wrote down. It teaches best when mistakes are cheap and the lessons are checked against other people's.Tony Hsieh
  32. Staying a beginner on purposeSuccess tempts founders to repeat what worked. Choosing unfamiliar work keeps the learning going, at the cost of the depth that comes from staying put.Caterina Fake
  33. Everyone plans to be special; the work decidesCuban's edge in his first business was knowing the software better than his customers' own vendors did. That came from reading manuals at night.Mark Cuban
  34. Start with the task, then choose the toolTechnology is easiest to sell when it is described in its own terms. It is most useful when it is described in someone else's.Esther Dyson
  35. Letting a company find out what it isTapulous began with several small iPhone apps. Only one of them turned out to be the company.Bart Decrem
  36. Assume the plan is wrong, then find out cheaplyThe second sentence carries the weight. Once a founder accepts that the plan contains mistakes, speed is simply the cheapest way to find them.Chuck Gordon
  37. Shipped work is the most credible reference a person hasA record of things built and shipped persuades better than any self-description. Some valuable work, though, makes no sound at all.Michael Lopp
  38. Keep the simple path short and the deep path openTwo ways for a product to fail, named in one sentence.Alan Kay
  39. Winning the old game faster is still playing the old gameCompeting on the incumbent's terms means competing where the incumbent is strongest. Changing the terms can make its strengths irrelevant.Seth Godin
  40. Interruption and the long stretch that real work needsFried compares a working day to a night's sleep. Nobody expects to sleep well after being woken every twenty minutes, yet offices schedule exactly that.Jason Fried
  41. The brick, and the years after itJobs was describing being pushed out of the company he had founded. The faith he meant was in the work, not in any particular plan.Steve Jobs
  42. Hunches first, data later, and how to tell when later has comeAn early product has too few users for data to say much. A grown product has too much at stake to rely on one person's instinct.Fred Wilson
  43. Value goes to whoever makes the change happenStartups do well when a shift is underway and incumbents are slow to move. Forcing a shift that has not arrived is a different bet.Ben Keighran
  44. Waiting for an engineer, then learning to buildCrowley spent years with notebooks full of ideas and no one to build them. The fix was to learn enough to build them badly himself.Dennis Crowley
  45. Love for the work is fuel, and it has to be the right kindA company takes years, and interest that fades after the first year will not carry anyone through the rest. The question is what, exactly, is loved.Brad Feld
  46. The work itself, not the talk about itA designer's list of lessons before his birthday included one about where the life of the work is. It is less about silence than about proportion.Ryan Freitas
  47. Working on the best idea, and finishing the good one firstTime spent on a second-best idea is time not spent on the best one. The catch is that the best idea often looks best only because it is new.David Heinemeier Hansson
  48. Caring about the work and the customer, and what it cannot supplyThe accelerator Cohen co-founded exists because the rest does not come naturally. That is the most useful way to read his line.David Cohen
  49. An idea kept off the market runs short of airReal users react in ways no team can predict, so time spent polishing in private is time spent guessing. Some products cannot afford that kind of learning.Matt Mullenweg
  50. The word “try” is often an excuse filed in advanceA line from a 1980 film about a sunken starfighter has become shorthand for commitment. It is sound about deadlines and misleading about experiments.Yoda
  51. Impossible until somebody does it, and sometimes still impossibleAchievements that once looked impossible tend to look obvious afterwards. That does not make every impossible-sounding plan merely early.Unattributed
  52. Popularity and results are different things, as Gekko knewThe most effective person on a team is not always the best liked. The film that produced the line also shows what happens when being disliked becomes a method.Gordon Gekko
  53. Life as a box of chocolates, and the card inside the lidA line from a 1994 film has become shorthand for accepting surprise. Real boxes of chocolates usually come with a guide.Forrest Gump
  54. Start a company for the idea you cannot dropA venture investor's test for founding a company is obsession. Everyone else, he suggests, learns more by joining one.Fred Wilson
  55. Build what you would use todayBeing the first user removes the guesswork. It also narrows the view.Paul Graham
  56. Leverage, the respectable kind of lazinessThe laziness Page means is not idleness. It is doing a piece of work once so that it never has to be done by hand again.Larry Page
  57. A system simple enough to run itself, until it growseBay began as a few rules and a way for users to rate each other, which let one person run it part time. Scale brought problems the simple system could not handle.Pierre Omidyar
  58. No plan, no MBA, and what the line leaves outThe formal apparatus of starting a company matters less than it used to. The idea matters less than the line suggests, too.Ron Conway
  59. Decline usually starts at homeCollins studied large companies that fell from strength. Most of the damage, he concluded, was self-inflicted, and visible long before the collapse.Jim Collins
  60. A good idea still needs a route to its usersHoffman means something specific by strategy: how the product reaches a very large audience without running out of money on the way.Reid Hoffman
  61. One objective at a time, and everyone knows whichA small company that pursues five goals at once usually makes progress on none. The hard part is choosing the one and saying no to the rest.Ben Keighran
  62. After a failure, the next choice is still openA failed company can push its founder into caution or into repeating the same bet. Both are ways of letting it decide.Roger Ehrenberg
  63. The route to one good idea runs through many bad onesThe attribution is uncertain but the pattern is well supported: people who produce more ideas tend to produce more good ones.Unattributed
  64. Start small and let demand set the directionA simple product makes the market's tug easy to feel. Choosing which tug to follow is still the founder's job.Brad Burnham
  65. Faith without fear is how startups begin and how some endEvery new company asks people to commit before the proof exists. That takes belief. Fear is a separate question, and it is worth keeping.Micah Baldwin
  66. Nobody is waiting to steal the idea, with a few exceptionsThe fear of theft assumes someone capable is idle and waiting. That is almost never true, and the exceptions are easy to name.Aaron Patzer
  67. A record with no failures is a warning signA perfect record usually means the targets were set low. The reasoning works for a company placing many bets and fails for one placing a single bet.Paul Buchheit
  68. Fear rarely leaves first, so the work starts with it presentMost fear about starting something is fear of looking foolish, and it fades only after the start. Some fear is information and deserves a hearing.Arianna Huffington
  69. The hardest pace a person can keep is the one to aim forWorking hard is common advice among founders. The more useful half of the sentence is the limit, and it is harder to see than it sounds.Justin Kan
  70. Pacing a startup like a long raceMost companies take years to build, and a team that sprints the first mile rarely finishes. A few markets are decided in months, though.Jean-David Chamboredon
  71. Showing up on schedule, especially on the bad daysThe rule is aimed at the day after a rejection, when stopping feels reasonable. Deciding the hours in advance takes that choice away.Seth Godin
  72. When people say it won't work, build enough to find outCrowley's longer version of this advice ends with building the idea to prove to yourself whether it works. That ending is the useful part.Dennis Crowley
  73. A ninety percent failure rate belongs in research, not payrollAt Xerox PARC most ambitious ideas did not ship, and the few that did reshaped computing. That arithmetic works for a portfolio. One company is not a portfolio.Alan Kay
  74. Bland is the failure nobody noticesA product people dislike at least gets talked about. A bland one fails without anyone noticing, including sometimes its makers.Ben Huh
  75. Doing things by hand to find out what the product should doAirbnb's founders learned what their product needed by doing the work in person. Manual effort teaches, as long as someone is keeping score.Brian Chesky
  76. Facing forward without forgetting what brokeThe head of research at General Motors wanted engineers looking ahead. His own career shows that the past is worth studying, just not living in.Charles F. Kettering
  77. Deciding without taking it personallyMost product arguments are about evidence dressed up as arguments about people. Separating the two makes decisions faster and teams calmer.Kevin Hale
  78. What risk-taking looks like in an actual companyAOL's founder took two very large risks. One built the company and one nearly erased it. Both are worth reading before copying the attitude.Steve Case
  79. Counting heads is not the same as thinkingBuffett wrote it to his partners forty-five years ago. It applies to founders asking friends whether an idea is good, and it has one important exception.Warren Buffett
  80. Do the least that gets the job done, and be exact about the jobThe first half of the advice is easy to follow. Everything depends on the second half: knowing what actually has to get done.Joshua Schachter
  81. Your own frustration as a starting point, plus some nervePersonal frustration is a good source of ideas because it comes with a first customer. The nerve to compete is the harder half.Chris Hughes
  82. Recessions are hard on companies and easier on ideasA downturn shrinks budgets and funding. It also clears out noise, lowers costs and sends people looking for cheaper, better ways to do things.Rob Kalin

2010 35 essays

  1. Choosing the adventure is easier with a floor under itLooking back from the end of a life is a useful way to weigh a risky choice. It works best for people whose downside is survivable.Tom Preston-Werner
  2. An idea that will not leave you alone says more about you than the marketPersistent interest keeps a founder going through the slow years. It says much less about whether anyone else wants the thing.Josh James
  3. School teaches last year; the market asks about next yearFord learned his trade in machine shops, not classrooms. The same experience that made him also taught him to miss what came next.Henry Ford
  4. Building for yourself is a good start and a risky finishA founder with the problem knows it better than any survey could. The open question is how many other people share it.Michael Arrington
  5. Nine rabbits on the ground, and why to chase oneFocus does not forbid seeing the other rabbits. It decides the order.Jack Ma
  6. Talking about a project is not starting itDescribing a plan to friends feels like progress. There is some evidence that it substitutes for progress, and also some cases where the conversation is the first step.Garrett Murray
  7. An idea kept private has not been testedInside one head an idea has no competition and no cost. Other people supply both.Michael Lopp
  8. Two tests for a path: whether it is fun, and whether it is hardBenioff left a comfortable job at Oracle to start Salesforce. His two tests make sense together and mislead when used one at a time.Marc Benioff
  9. Interest can stand in for a plan, up to a pointFacebook grew from a dormitory project without a grand design. Its rollout was still planned carefully, one campus at a time, and that detail matters.Mark Zuckerberg
  10. Past three priorities, the word stops meaning anythingA priority is a decision about what loses. A list of ten top goals is a list with the deciding left out.Jim Collins
  11. Passion, hard work and the terms left outeBay began as a hobby site written over a holiday weekend. Its founder credits passion and work, and the modest “I think” in his sentence is worth keeping.Pierre Omidyar
  12. The money left behind by everyone chasing the new thingEvery new product makes an old one surplus. Somebody has to sell, support or repair the old one, and few ambitious people want the job.Matt Rutledge
  13. Speed comes from a habit of doing, not from hasteMost startup decisions can be reversed next week. Treating them as if they could not is where the time goes.Fred Wilson
  14. Why real inventions meet resistanceLand spent his career asking people to accept things they had not imagined. His own record both supports the line and breaks it.Edwin Land
  15. Keeping the main thing the main thing is the easy halfThe rule sounds circular until a team tries to follow it. Then the hard question turns out to be which thing is the main one.Jim Barksdale
  16. Move fast and break things, and count what breaksThe slogan is sound arithmetic for a website that can roll back in minutes. It is not a law of speed.Mark Zuckerberg
  17. Leaving the comfort zone, and the work that happens inside itDiscomfort is where new skills start. Mastery of them is built somewhere calmer, by repetition.Bob Parsons
  18. Stubborn about the goal, loose about the routeFounders hear two pieces of advice that seem to cancel each other out. Hoffman's answer is to apply them to different things.Reid Hoffman
  19. The decision takes a minute; the consequences take a yearMost of the weight of a decision arrives after it is made. Founders who plan for that part make better calls and fewer reversals.Micah Baldwin
  20. Do the job for a while before hiring someone to do itA founder who has never run sales cannot judge a sales leader by the interview. The remedy is to borrow the job before filling it.Ben Horowitz
  21. After working for yourself, going back is harder than it looksControl over one's own time is hard to give up once tasted. That does not make returning to a salary a failure, and for many it is the right move.Magnus Jepson
  22. Many small bets, and a clear way to pick the winnerThe method has two halves. Most teams remember the trying and forget that someone has to decide, by a stated rule, which result counts as best.Jonah Peretti
  23. Yelp's first idea, and the readiness to drop itYelp started as a way to email friends for recommendations. The part people used was the one its founders treated as a side feature.Jeremy Stoppelman
  24. Believing in an idea when the room thinks it is crazyPandora survived years of rejection because its founder kept believing. It also had a working product that justified the belief.Tim Westergren
  25. Disney's early years, and when talking first is the right moveA rough cut of Snow White persuaded a banker where a pitch could not. Disneyland, though, began with years of planning.Walt Disney
  26. A four-day week as a small company's advantageA small company in a small town cannot outbid a big one on salary. It can offer a day a week back.Ryan Carson
  27. Tell people the idea, then read their doubt carefullyTalking about an idea costs little and teaches a lot. The doubt it meets comes in two kinds, and only one of them should be ignored.Todd Garland
  28. Looking for the reasons it could work, without ignoring the oddsAsking why something could work is how new options get found. It is a poor way to judge them once found.Steve Case
  29. Creativity as a matter of volumeThe head of a network of humor sites had a simple account of where good ideas come from. It depends on each idea being cheap to try.Ben Huh
  30. Managing work you know how to do yourselfA programmer who co-founded two web companies before he was thirty has good reason to trust hands-on knowledge. The rule gets harder to keep with every hire outside engineering.Justin Kan
  31. Most deals worth doing leave both sides aheadGood products create value that did not exist before. Some contests still have exactly one winner.Tom Preston-Werner
  32. Choosing the right work, and how Flickr found itFlickr started as a feature inside a game nobody remembers. The right thing turned up while the team worked hard on the wrong one.Caterina Fake
  33. Execution decides, and sometimes the idea decides firstThe first social network with momentum lost to better executors. A flawless execution of the wrong idea lost too.Scott Belsky
  34. Failing at something beats never trying it, most of the timeOver a long life, people regret what they did not try. That holds only when the attempt was survivable.Seth Godin
  35. Ideas are cheap for a reasonFounders guard ideas as if they were the valuable part. The history of the last few years suggests the valuable part is almost everything that comes after.Guy Kawasaki