Quotes About Work

I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book... and I began putting more work into environmental history.

I was never interested in 'Teen Beat' like roles. I just wanted to work.

I like to call in sick to work at places where I've never held a job. Then when the manager tells me I don't work there, I tell them I'd like to. But not today, as I'm sick.

I want to read the employment section of the Bible. I think it's simply called Job.

I find it fascinating how the supernatural infiltrates your head, even when you reject such concepts. Just as cold germs go about their work, regardless of whether you believe in them. Every

I think anybody who's doing work in their teen years on TV or in the movies, you're a teen idol by default.

All we can do is work on our own delight. And encourage others' delight. Teach with the sort of passion that marks the best teachers.

To work in this field, you have to become devious yourself. You have to think like a malicious attacker to find weaknesses in your own work. . . . Cryptographers are professional paranoids. It is important to separate your professional paranoia from your real-world life so as not to go completely crazy.

Building stuff was an ethical act, a way to become more fully human.

one condition: that she be allowed to work from home.

Walk into a library anywhere in the world and you'll notice the same thing: It's quiet and calm. Everyone knows how to behave in a library. In fact, few things transcend cultures like library behavior. It's a place where people go to read, think, study, focus, and work. And the hushed, respectful environment reflects that. Isn't that what an office should be?

That's the great irony of letting passionate people work from home. A manager's natural instinct is to worry about his workers not getting enough work done, but the real threat is that too much will likely get done. And because the manager isn't sitting across from his worker anymore, he can't look in the person's eyes and see burnout.

Delegators love to pull people into meetings, too. In fact, meetings are a delegator's best friend. That's where he gets to seem important. Meanwhile, everyone else who attends is pulled away from getting real work done.

Problems can usually be solved with simple, mundane solutions. That means there's no glamorous work. You don't get to show off your amazing skills. You just build something that gets the job done and then move on. This approach may not earn you oohs and aahs, but it lets you get on with it.

Don't throw good time after bad work.

Meaningful work, creative work, thoughtful work, important work—this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone. But in the modern office such long stretches just can't be found. Instead, it's just one interruption after another.

Easy is a word that's used to describe other people's jobs. "That should be easy for you to do, right?" But notice how rarely people describe their own tasks as easy. For you, it's "Let me look into it"—but for others, it's "Get it done.

long commutes make you fat, stressed, and miserable. Even short commutes stab at your happiness.

Modern-day offices have become interruption factories. Merely walking in the door makes you a target for anyone else's conversation, question, or irritation. When you're on the inside, you're a resource who can be polled, interrogated, or pulled into a meeting. And another meeting about that other meeting. How can you expect anyone to get work done in an environment like that?

soon you'll see that it's the work—not the clock—that matters.

But when you think of the company as a product, you ask different questions: Do people who work here know how to use

But the thing is, there's not more work to be done all of a sudden. The problem is that there's hardly any uninterrupted, dedicated time to do it.

You can only work exactly the same way, at the same pace, doing the same work for so long before monotony bites.

Set out to do good work. Set out to be fair in your dealings with customers, employees, and reality. Leave a lasting impression with the people you touch and worry less (or not at all!) about changing the world. Chances are, you won't, and if you do, it's not going to be because you said you would.