Scott Berkun Quotes

• Most people doubt online meeting scan work, but they somehow overlook that most in person meetings don't work either.

  Scott Berkun

  People, Doubt, Online

  "The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work". Book by Scott Berkun, 2013.

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• It’s not the fear of writing that blocks people, it’s fear of not writing well; something quite different.

  Scott Berkun

  Block, Writing, People

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• My intent is simply to know my material so well that I'm very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is the goal.

  Scott Berkun

  Confidence, Goal, Perfection

  Scott Berkun (2009). “Confessions of a Public Speaker”, p.18, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• Staying curious and open is what makes growth
  possible, and it requires practice to maintain that mindset. To keep learning, we have to avoid the temptation to slide into narrow, safe views of what we do.

  Scott Berkun

  Views, Practice, Temptation

  Scott Berkun (2008). “Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management”, p.4, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be useful, I want to be good, and I want to sound like myself. Trying to be perfect gets in the way of all three.

  Scott Berkun

  Perfect, Trying, Want

  Scott Berkun (2009). “Confessions of a Public Speaker”, p.5, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• Part of the challenge of innovation is coming up with the problem to solve, not just its solution.

  Scott Berkun

  Challenges, Innovation, Problem

  Scott Berkun (2010). “The Myths of Innovation”, p.10, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world.

  Scott Berkun

  Fun, Ideas, Together

  Scott Berkun (2010). “The Myths of Innovation”, p.8, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• Commit yourself to taking enough risks that you will fail some of the time. If you're not failing, we're not doing something sufficiently difficult or creative.

  Scott Berkun

  Creative, Risk, Failing

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• Innovation is significant positive change.

  Scott Berkun

  Innovation, Positive Change, Significant

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• Good public speaking is based on good private thinking

  Scott Berkun

  Thinking, Public Speaking

  Scott Berkun (2009). “Confessions of a Public Speaker”, p.57, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• The bottleneck is never code or creativity; it's lack of clarity.

  Scott Berkun

  Creativity, Clarity, Code

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• Experiment is the expected failure to deliberately learn something.

  Scott Berkun

  Experiments, Expected

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• People tell me this is obvious. But it's ok to be obvious. Knowing and doing are different. Many people know many obvious things they completely fail to do, despite their knowledge.

  Scott Berkun

  Obvious Things, Knowing, People

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• When I'm the speaker, I know that special moment [just before speaking] is the only time I will have the entire audience's full attention. Unless an alien spaceship crash-lands on stage midway through the talk, the silence before I begin is the most powerful moment I have. What defines how well I'll do starts with how I use the power of that moment.

  Scott Berkun

  Powerful, Land, Silence

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• The temptation many creative people I know have is to strive for popularity. To make, do, and say things that other people like in the hopes of pleasing them. This motivation is nice. And sometimes the end result is good. But often what happens in trying so hard to please other people, especially many other people, the result is mediocre.

  Scott Berkun

  Motivation, Nice, People

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• Innovative ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel. If you forget people’s concerns and feelings when you present an innovation, or neglect to understand their perspectives in your design, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

  Scott Berkun

  Ideas, People, Perspective

  Scott Berkun (2010). “The Myths of Innovation”, p.61, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• History can't give attention to what's been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success.

  Scott Berkun

  Creativity, Giving, Innovation

  Scott Berkun (2007). “The Myths of Innovation”, p.23, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• If you'd like to be good at something, the first thing to out the window is the notion of perfection.

  Scott Berkun

  Perfection, Firsts, Window

  Scott Berkun (2009). “Confessions of a Public Speaker”, p.4, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• This is one big problem with working remotely: no one believes you have a job at all.

  Scott Berkun

  Jobs, Believe, Problem

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• No one has died from giving a bad presentation. Well, at least one person did, President William Henry Harrison, but he developed pneumonia after giving the longest inaugural address in U.S. history. The easy lesson from his story: keep it short, or you might die.

  Scott Berkun

  Pneumonia, Giving, President

  Scott Berkun (2009). “Confessions of a Public Speaker”, p.13, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• All great tasks test our motivation. It's easy to court ideas over beers and change the world with napkin sketches, but like most things taken home from bars, new challenges arise the next day. It's in the morning light when work begins, and grand ideas (or barroom conquests) lose their luster. To do interesting things requires work and it's no surprise we abandon demanding passions for simpler, easier, more predictable things.

  Scott Berkun

  Morning, Motivation, Taken

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• There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn’t one.

  Scott Berkun

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• Anyone can criticize or accept praise, but initiating a positive exchange is a hallmark of a difference maker.

  Scott Berkun

  Differences, Praise, Hallmark

  Scott Berkun (2011). “Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds”, p.38, BookBaby

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• The way you find the answers to your problems will be unique to you.

  Scott Berkun

  Unique, Answers, Way

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• It seems that bad advice that's fun will always be better known than than good advice that's dull-no matter how useless that fun advice is.

  Scott Berkun

  Fun, Advice, Useless

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