The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

-- Richard Feynman, Caltech commencement address, 1974

You have to organize the world so that you get a series of small successes. And be prepared to take any success as a success.Make it easier for yourself to accomplish things. If you can remove parts of your task list (punt for now or remove entirely) it can help -- a long todo list is demoralizing. I find that people generally try to build very large systems; this the enemy of productivity.

Choose a design that will allow you to arrive at as minimal a system as possible as quickly as possible, such that the system still retains conceptual integrity (that is to say, it is whole.) Then, afterwards, each time you sit down and do a bit of work, you'll have added a function or whatever instead of slogging along towards your first working system, which could be quite distant.

Finally, don't thrash when the working isn't happening. Instead, go goof off or go for a jog. This really helps. You can't work all the time, and if you've been pushing too hard your productivity gets diminished rapidly.
- joshu(HN User)

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
-
Peter McWilliams

I guess we have been taught to do this exact thing throughout education.

You can't screwup what you can't change

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose the ventures before us.

- William Shakespeare, Julias Ceasar

Cliffnotes of quote for the Shakespearean impaired

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely
different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and
because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window
everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all
moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're
in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is
overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the
real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't
focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the
whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate
consciousness.

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
and this reminded me of song "Guaranteed" from movie "Into the Wild"

So here goes the first

Doubt is good. It means you're being introspective, that you're not resting on prior knowledge (that might be invalid now), and that you're honestly weighing the situation instead of employing blind optimism. Doubt is healthy! Hold onto that.

Will any of this make you feel better? Probably not, because feelings are emotional, not logical. If I read this list back then, I doubt it would have "fixed" my worries. But maybe it helps to know that this is just how it goes.

So listen to the expert bloggers; they have great advice. Just filter their attitudes through your own lens, and remember that they went through this pain too

Original source

I would like to keep this space dedicated to good quotes from blogs/articles/forums. They would be technical/philosophical/humorous and xkcd type. So keep lurking........