Visual Summary / DVFZ Books
One hundred sayings, and the six shapes they keep making
Each quote gets its own short essay, so the book reads as a list. Read the hundred together and a small number of structures keep reappearing, including one the book builds by contradicting itself. This page is a selection, not the whole list.
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01 Shape one · the disagreement
The book hands you both sides of the argument
Read the hundred quotes in order and you keep meeting pairs that flatly contradict each other. That is not a fault in the collection. It is the most useful thing in it.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder (Thomas Haynes Bayly) sits in the same chapter as out of sight, out of mind (John Heywood). Good things come to those who wait (Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie) sits a few pages from never put off until tomorrow what you can do today (Benjamin Franklin). A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is for (John a Shedd) is answered later by it's better to be safe than sorry (Samuel Lover). Where there's a will, there's a way (George Herbert) is answered by don't bite off more than you can chew (Carroll Bryant).
Neither half of a pair is the true one. Each is a rule with an edge, and the pair shows you where that edge falls. The introduction says as much before the first quote arrives. So the useful move is not to pick a favourite saying. It is to work out which question decides between the two.
Quite a few of them only make sense in the proper context. When taken out of context, it might not apply to the situation.Introduction
Write down the saying you quote most often. Then write the situation in which its opposite would be the better advice. That situation is the edge of your rule, and you now know where it is.
02 Shape two · the surface
What you can see first is the weakest evidence you will get
Several of the hundred attack the same habit from different angles: settling the question of a person or a thing from the one detail available at a glance.
Don't judge a book by its cover (George Eliot). Appearances can be deceptive (Frida Kahlo). Still waters run deep (William Shakespeare). All that glitters is not gold (William Shakespeare). The book's examples are ordinary and exact: the strict, shouting manager who turns out to be kind and bad at showing it, the barking dog that wants to play, the quiet person you filed as cold.
The reason the habit is so costly is a matter of timing. Your verdict is complete within seconds and then stops moving. Real evidence starts at nothing and only grows as you watch what someone actually does. Everything you decide in the space between the two is decided on almost no information at all.
If given enough time, people, situations, and events will reveal their true nature. You need only sit back and analyze, but never assume.Quote 27, Appearances Can Be Deceptive
Think of the person you made up your mind about fastest this month. Write down the one thing you actually watched them do. If the verdict is longer than the evidence, hold the verdict.
03 Shape three · the lag
The work goes in long before anything shows
A watched pot never boils (Benjamin Franklin) is the clearest statement of it, and the author's own story under that quote is the clearest illustration. He wanted to play guitar, had no guitar, watched videos, borrowed one, and was terrible. Six months later he played his first song.
No pain, no gain (Jane Fonda) says the same thing about a body that has to be pushed before it changes. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (Lao-Tzu) and there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time (Desmond Tutu) both attack the other half of the problem, which is that a goal large enough to matter is too large to start.
The shape underneath all four is a gap. Effort accumulates in a straight, boring line from day one. What anyone can see, including you, stays flat for a long time and then lifts. Almost everyone who quits, quits inside that gap, and quits while the effort line is still climbing normally.
Put in the work, be patient, and trust that it will all pay off.Quote 2, A Watched Pot Never Boils
Take the goal you keep restarting. Break it into steps small enough to do in a day, give the whole thing a realistic deadline, and do today's step before you judge the plan. The book asks for exactly this under the elephant quote.
04 Shape four · the arrival
Luck is an arrival that happens to find you ready
The harder you work, the luckier you get (Gary Player) reads like a slogan until you notice what the book does with it. Chances turn up on their own schedule. Whether one becomes luck depends entirely on the state you are in when it lands.
The early bird catches the worm (William Camden) is about being in position before the competition. Time and tide wait for no man (Geoffrey Chaucer) is about the chance that will not hold still for you. And after victory, tighten your helmet chord (Old Samurai Saying) is the warning about the other direction: readiness falls away on its own when you relax after a win, and the next arrival does not know you were celebrating.
Under the rising tide quote the author adds one line that reorganises the whole idea, and it is the one to keep.
I believe that good things come to those who wait in preparation. You might want all these things to happen, but if you're waiting and aren't ready for when it happens, you'll miss your chance.Quote 33, A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
Name one chance you would want in the next year. Write the single thing that would already have to be true for you to take it on the day it arrives. Start that thing this week, while nothing is arriving.
06 Shape six · the boundary
The past and other people sit outside the line you control
The last quote in the book is the cleanest statement of the shape that runs through all seven chapters. You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending (C. S. Lewis).
Everything the book asks you to stop doing is an attempt to reach across that line. A bad workman always blames his tools (George Herbert) is about pushing the cause outside yourself. It's no use crying over spilt milk (James Howell) and the best-laid plans go astray (Robert Burns) are about a past and an outcome that will not move. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink (John Heywood) is about another person's decision, and the author tells a hard family story under it about paying for a rehab place that was left after a week.
What is inside the line is small and it is enough. It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves (William Shakespeare). When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves (Viktor E. Frankl). And it's never too late to mend (Charles Reade), which in the book usually means one apology you are still able to make.
But we always have the ability to change who we are and thereby change the situation from within.Quote 74, When We Are No Longer Able to Change a Situation
Take the thing you keep replaying. Write one sentence on the part that is finished and cannot be edited, then one sentence on the next move that is still yours. Act on the second sentence only.
07 Recap
Six shapes, and a hundred quotes you can now sort
Nothing in this book is hard to understand. What makes it usable is noticing that the hundred short essays keep returning to the same few structures, and that three of those structures do most of the work.
Every rule has an edge
Wait, or act now. Stay safe, or leave the harbor. The book gives you both, because the situation is what decides, not the saying.
Work first, proof much later
Effort rises from day one and nothing shows for months. Six months of practice before a first song. Almost everyone quits inside that gap.
The line around what is yours
The beginning is closed and other people decide for themselves. What is left is your next move, and the book says that is enough.
The other three shapes are about how you read a situation. Do not settle a verdict from what you can see in the first second, because the evidence has not arrived yet. Keep yourself ready between chances, because the chance will not wait while you get ready. And check whether the load in front of you is one that divides, like grief and chores, or one that holds only to its weakest part.
Hold those six and the book stops being a hundred separate quotes. It becomes six questions you can put to whatever is in front of you today.
Adapted from Life-Changing Quotes From Famous (and not as famous) People
Sweet Palmer · © 2022 DVFZ Training Consultancy Services · 98 cited sources and 17 image credits in the source edition
A selection of quotes grouped into six shapes, not all 100