Dan John Quotes

“Most champions are built by punch-the-clock workouts rather than extraordinary efforts.”

“If you’re training yourself, you’ll tend to know everything you decide to do. You’ll always push yourself exactly as hard as you feel like pushing yourself. You won’t have any gaps in your training because you have no idea what you’re lacking. Finally, you’ll be able to progress and regress easily in your system since your single follower—you—will know what you want, even if it isn’t something you need to do. I hope I painted a picture of mediocrity here.”

“Keeping your waist circumference to less than half your height can help increase life expectancy for every person in the world.”

“Be wary of getting your goal and discovering it wasn’t worth it.”

“Constantly strive for mastery and grace.”

“Just tell me what to do. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I don’t want to be here.”

“Seriously, you don’t know what to do about food? Here is an idea: Eat like an adult. Stop eating fast food, stop eating kid’s cereal, knock it off with all the sweets and comfort foods whenever your favorite show is not on when you want it on, ease up on the snacking and—don’t act like you don’t know this—eat vegetables and fruits more. Really, how difficult is this? Stop with the whining. Stop with the excuses. Act like an adult and stop eating like a television commercial. Grow up.”

“We graze ourselves up to a nice level of morbid obesity.”

“Doing everything at once makes you marginal at everything... at best.”

“I never stopped reading. I never stopped listening. I never stopped learning.”

“If it is important, do it every day. If it’s not important, don’t do it at all.”

“In other words, throwers throw, bikers bike and lifters lift... and if you want to play in another person’s game, you might get whipped merely because they have more time in the saddle.”

“Make yourself a slave to good habits.”

“Please understand nearly every concept I hold near and dear has been stolen from others much brighter and better than me.”

“To do everything at once, you have to be lousy at everything. To be great, you have to focus on very few things — most of us can barely handle more than one.”

“When things go wrong, simplify.”

“The problem with values is that everybody has them, but nobody has the same order.”

“We always seem to want what we can’t have and, if we can have it, we want something else!”