The Little Book of Big Management Wisdom

QUOTATION 19

ANDREW CARNEGIE ON INVESTING 100 PER CENT OF YOUR ENERGY IN YOUR CAREER

Use this to remind you that 75 per cent effort isn’t enough if you want to excel.

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), one of the greatest nineteenth-century century American industrialists, did not rise from the poverty of a one-room weaver’s cottage in Dunfermline to international renown by investing only part of his energy in his work.

The average person puts about 25 per cent of his [sic] energy into his work. The world takes its hat off to those who put more than 50 per cent of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100 per cent.

Andrew Carnegie

Carnegie would have been bewildered by the present-day discussion ...