3 Alain de Botton Quotes to Motivate You
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And how to leverage them to find success.
The Secondhand Inspiration Project begins with a motivational quote and ventures wherever the creative path meanders.
From his website (https://www.alaindebotton.com/): Alain de Botton was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1969 and now lives in London. He is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a “philosophy of everyday life.” He’s written on love, travel, architecture, and literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries.
If you haven’t read his work, you should. It is insightful, intelligent, and inspirational.
Let’s break down three of his best quotes.
“The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.”
Whether it’s communicating with a love interest, colleague, workout partner, relative, close friend, etc. — we are constantly competing with modern devices to capture their interest.
Even if it is unintentional, a lull in a conversation usually results in someone glancing at their favorite app or social media feed. Often it feels like we need to strap a phone to our foreheads so folks can feign like they are listening to us.
It’s easy to take offense to this. But instead of being sensitive, we should accept technology’s challenge by becoming more dynamic and fascinating.
If you need to be the center of attention, your primary competition remains tucked in your audience’s pockets. Bring your A-game and become more exciting than the bullshit on people’s screens.
“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”
Recently, after dusting off a shelved project at work, members of my team were perplexed by several design decisions that we made last year.
We studied the calculations and background data for hours, trying to figure out why we…
