Quotes About Productivity

If you're dealing with people who you perceive want to get it done as their top priority, and if in your conversations with them, you acknowledge this and your communications with them are brief and to the point so as not to obstruct them, you will increase cooperation and decrease misunderstanding.

Ecosystems function locally, not globally. Local extinction, the disappearance of a species within, say, the woodlot down the street, or even your front yard, is now predicted to compromise the productivity of that woodlot and your yard.

Few people realize that the dry Mediterranean region, including the original breadbasket of civilization in what is now Iraq, was once a forested ecosystem. When humans cut those forests thousands of years ago, rainfall became even more scarce than it already was and the entire region became and has remained an extremely fragile and far-less-productive desert-scrub ecosystem.

Don't mistake activity for achievement," John Wooden

Deadlines just aren't real to me until I'm staring one in the face.

Deadlines just aren't real to me until I'm staring one in the face.

For the first-time novelist you've got to get up at 5:30 in the morning and write until 7, make breakfast and go to work. Or, come home and work for an hour. Everybody has an hour in their day somewhere.

Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day.

Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day.

From my own experience, I realized that there are many other reasons we procrastinate, starting with fear.

A farmer in Jhalsu village loses a whole day's earnings if he goes to a bank branch, a couple of km away, for a simple transaction like depositing or withdrawing cash.

Companies such as Google (and, historically, 3M) operationalize this theory by giving employees time at work to do whatever they want, without restriction or guidance.

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.

Calculo, como si fuera informe de gobierno, que he publicado unos 60 mil dibujos en 60 años, y si contara todos los que he hecho, dibujo por dibujo, paso de los cien mil fácilmente.

Don't spend a week prepping for meetings; spend an hour and then go talk to people. Anything more is stalling. Don't spend months doing full-time customer conversations before beginning to move on a product. Spend a week, maybe two. Get your bearings and then give them something to commit to.

It is a total delusion for people to say, 'I don't have time' because we all have the same amount of time in a day. What they really mean is 'It isn't important enough to me now'.

Task jumping is NOT multi-tasking, it is time wasting. It can take between 2× and 8× more time to complete a task if you jump and flit between too many tasks. The time (void) between tasks consumes the most energy, as a body in motion tends to stay in motion. All the energy is in the starting again, again. Turn off all distractions, isolate yourself and maintain your flow state for as long as you can. Some simple tools to do this are in forthcoming chapters.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

We cannot adopt a foreign policy which gives away all of our people's earnings or imposes such a tremendous burden on the individual American as, in effect, to destroy his incentive and his ability to increase production and productivity and his standard of living. We cannot assume a financial burden in our foreign policy so great that it threatens liberty at home.

Every day in every way, I'm getting busier. —ROBERT CIALDINI B

Every day in every way, I'm getting busier. —ROBERT CIALDINI