1: “I live right on the edge of downtown Portland in this fun micro-urban neighborhood,” John Mark Comer writes in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
Early in the morning, as John Mark sits and prays while enjoying his first cup of coffee, his neighbors are filing out the door to do a sunrise run.
It’s “a house full of single people who are essentially a walking advertisement for Nike,” … continue reading
1: “On a regular basis I catch myself saying, ‘I wish there were ten more hours in a day,'”  John Mark Comer writes in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
Time is a problem. A limitation. A challenge.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re the CEO of a multinational corporation or a retired school bus driver, John Mark notes, “if we’re single or raising a family of seven, if we live … continue reading
1: We stare at the screen.
“Slowly and painstakingly formulating half a sentence, reading it over, deeming it to be inadequate, deleting it, staring at the screen some more, then trying again,” Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals.
The writing coach Stephen Lloyd Webber once noted that it’s ironic that we call this activity “writing,” since much of our time is spent not writing, not deleting what we’ve … continue reading
1: To answer this question, we must step back in time.
“Imagine a world in which our only reliable options for a quick lunch across much of the country were fast-food joints like McDonald’s and Burger King,” Panera Bread Company founder  Ron Shaich writes in his powerful book Know What Matters.
If we were born after the year 1990, this reality is likely hard to comprehend.
Because now there’s … continue reading
1: It was 6 AM, and more than fifty people were standing in line outside the Au Bon Pain bakery cafe in Boston’s Copley Place mall.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Ron Shaich writes in his terrific book Know What Matters. “I’d spent months desperately trying to figure out how to get people to stop walking past our door.
“And now, here they were, waiting in line,” he recounts. … continue reading
1: “Excuse me, sir, would you like to try a cookie?”
The year was 1980. Future Panera Bread CEOÂ Ron Shaich, then 26 years old, was standing on the sidewalk of a busy street in downtown Boston.
“I held out a tray of chocolate-chip cookies to a square-jawed gentleman,” Ron recalls in his excellent book  Know What Matters.
The man hesitated, then he took a cookie.
“We’re testing … continue reading
1: We get mixed up.
Means, ends, and by-products are not the same thing.
“A profound distinction is concealed among those prosaic terms,” Panera Bread Company founder Ron Shaich writes in his powerful book Know What Matters: Lessons from a Lifetime of Transformations, “one that unlocks the code to designing a business and a life of enduring value.”
Exhibit one: Ron’s friend who has type 1 diabetes.
“He wants … continue reading
“Almost everything that happens is either a good time or a good story.”
1: It was the weekend. The family drove into the countryside for a picnic.
“Just as they’d laid an impressive lunch spread on the blanket,”  Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals, “the heavens opened, but on this occasion, the parents let the kids eat anyway, in a pandemonium of wet sandwiches and laughter.”
This experience … continue reading
1: “Screw them. We could run a better convenience store than these folks!”
Twenty-one-year-old college student Ron Shaich was mad. He and his friends had been “escorted” out of the Store 24 convenience store directly across from Clark University, which they attended.
The “beefy security guard . . . had taken one look at the trio of scruffy kids lingering over the ice-cream freezer and decided we were intent on … continue reading
1: “To create anything of value—whether it’s a product, a company, a society, or a life,” Ron Shaich writes in his powerful book Know What Matters: Lessons from a Lifetime of Transformations, “we must push through our default settings.”
How do we do that?
“By living consciously and deliberately, by making the hard choices, and by using tools … to discover what will really matter, again and again.”… continue reading
