Quotes About Productivity

I often get asked how I write so much. As any writer knows, the answer is to write a lot more than you actually publish.

What I feel bad about is not having published very much in the last few years.

I think my very best work came out when I was about 60, not when I was 20. I was publishing all the time when I was in my 20s, and some of those poems I still like. And there were a few after 60, and in my 70s, that I like. But they became fewer and fewer.

It's like, the front door of the office is like a Cuisinart, and you walk in, and your day is shredded to bits because you have 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and something else happens, you're pulled off your work, then you have 20 minutes, then it's lunch, then you have something else to do.

When it's all about the work, it's clear who in the company is pulling their weight and who isn't.

When you pump up your exercise, it makes you feel better and makes you look better, so you do a better job. It's mental, too.

'Purple Plumeria' I dithered over for months and then wrote the whole thing between the beginning of July and end of August. The dithering and procrastination time was three times the writing times.

Ideas? My head is full of them, one after the other, but they serve no purpose there. They must be put down on paper, one after the other.

I like that kind of frantic schedule. It makes me feel like I have a purpose.

I hate not working. It's that lack of purpose. It becomes very easy to lie in until midday.

The more a person learns how to use the forces of nature for his own purposes, by means of perfecting the sciences and the invention and improvement of machines, the more he will produce.

It would probably be better if I got involved in fewer things just because I'd have more time to write for my own purposes... But if somebody calls you up with a really cool project, it's hard to just say 'no' because you don't feel like working.

As a general principle, the American people would be well served by the active pursuit of effective policies to support longer-run growth in productivity.

One, I push my deadlines closer than anybody else, or let's say it this way: I'm really late.

We know we need bosses and deadlines to help us get work done. But sometimes we can also use an external push to make us have a good time. In both cases, our future self will appreciate the help.

I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one.

On gym days, I don't get to my desk until 4 in the afternoon, and everything except bedtime and the appointment with the liquid narcotic is pushed back a bit.

When I write, when I'm going hot, I don't want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you're pushing it.

I work a couple of hours a day with a guitar or pushing words around, so over time I have a lot of material, so I don't get into this feast-or-famine situation.

He puts his right hand lightly on the cup, I put my left, leaving the right free to transcribe, and away we go. We get, oh, 500 to 600 words an hour. Better than gasoline.

I like efficient people. I'm pretty impatient, so I can't stand people who putter around.

If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.

When I worked in an office, I was definitely using a computer that should've been long gone over a decade ago but wasn't because it wasn't broken so they weren't going to fix it.

I don't want to be doing a job where I'm not doing a job, just sitting around in my flat just bored.