351 Productivity Quotes

It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

Our meetings are held to discuss many problems which would never arise if we held fewer meetings.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

I really love the dark of the night. It helps me to concentrate.

It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.

I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

To get what you want, STOP doing what isn't working.

Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man's capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy. I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create...

There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.

Mechanization best serves mediocrity.

Well, now that he's finished one building, he'll go write four books about it.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.

All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.

Rise early, that by habit it may become familiar, agreeable, healthy, and profitable. It may, for a while, be irksome to do this, but that will wear off; and the practice will produce a rich harvest forever thereafter; whether in public or private walks of life.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it. There is plenty of work to do if people would do it.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Write a page a day. It will add up.

The dawn speeds a man on his journey, and speeds him too in his work.

An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything.

Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

Life is so short, questionable and evanescent that it is not worth the trouble of major effort.

The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

Here's to the man who rode the race, who took the time, who kept the time, and who did the trick.

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

'Don't burn the day away'

In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.

I've been too fucking busy - or vice versa.

What's the point of being efficient if you're only leading an efficiently blank life?

Don't you get an empty feeling in your soul when you have a blank to-do list?

Never pass up a chance to go to the loo or to take a poo.

Out upon you, Jerry! Jerry, you're a pity! Jerry, turn about and plant a garden in the City!

A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.

The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort.

Ceux qui s'appliquent trop aux petites choses deviennent ordinairement incapables des grandes.

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

Keine geringe Kunst ist schlafen: es thut schon Noth, den ganzen Tag darauf hin zu wachen.

Misspending a man's time is a kind of self-homicide.

I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe.

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. this may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.

First we inspire them, then we perspire them.

Don't get it right, just get it written.

Create, artist! Do not talk!

Without haste, but without rest.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build.

In art the best is good enough.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

The deed is everything, the glory naught.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

George Dillon: It's easy to answer the ultimate questions - it saves you bothering with the immediate ones.

I am always in haste, but never in a hurry.

Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

Some day no one will have to work more than two days a week... The human being can consume so much and no more. When we reach the point when the world produces all the goods that it needs in two days, as it inevitably will, we must curtail our production of goods and turn our attention to the great problem of what to do with our new leisure.

How lame do you have to be to spend your time like that on the Internet? Can't you do something more constructive, like surf for porn? Or go into the real world and interact with people rather than cyber-sniping.

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'

I know that I have my own mission and I know that life, unfortunately, is short. I have a limited time, and we have to get as much done as possible, and that's that. And we have to preserve our health.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Ambition is the death of thought. (p. 77e)

I do all my best work in bed.

For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.

A goal is a dream with a deadline.

I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my Definite Purpose in life, therefore, I DEMAND of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action.

Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right.' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

During the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, growth in manufacturing productivity in the United Kingdom was the lowest of all the seven major industrial countries in the world. During the 1980s, our annual rate of growth of output per head in manufacturing has been the highest of all the seven major industrial countries.

Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.