Quotes About Productivity

Just to be sure, he counted the words. "I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went," he reported. At this rate he could produce 2,500 words by breakfast. He didn't expect to do so every single day—sometimes there were business obligations or fox hunts—but he made sure each week to meet a goal. For each of his novels, he would draw up a working schedule, typically planning for 10,000 words a week, and then keep a diary.

While other novelists were worrying about money and struggling to turn in chapters overdue at their publishers, Trollope was prospering and remaining ahead of schedule. While one of his novels was being serialized, he usually had at least one other completed novel, often two or three, awaiting publication.

To help his clients eliminate distractions, Acheson started off by having them write down everything that had their attention, large and small, professional and personal, distal and proximal, fuzzy and fussy. They didn't have to analyze or organize or schedule anything, but in each case they did have to identify the specific next action to be taken.

Write or nothing. It's the same principle as keeping order in a school. If you make the pupils behave, they will learn something just to keep from being bored. I find it works. Two very simple rules, a. you don't have to write. b. you can't do anything else. The rest comes of itself.

and to follow the Two-Minute Rule: If something will take less than two minutes, don't put it on a list. Get it out of the way immediately.

Before, I'd see a pile of papers and wouldn't know what the hell was in them and just be like, Oh, my God," Carey says. "The day I got to zero, which is GTD talk for having nothing in your in-box—no phone messages, no e-mails, nothing, not a piece of paper—when I got to that point, I felt like the world got lifted off my shoulders. I felt like I had just come out of meditating in the desert, not a care in the world. I just felt euphoric.

Productivity is going to be a critical issue. And it's not just about getting more time for professors in the classroom. It involves reexamining the learning experience and restructuring faculty and the use of faculty time.

Escola é máquina de destruir crianças. Nas escolas as crianças são transformadas em adultos. É isto que todos os pais querem: que seus filhos sejam adultos produtivos. Como ficam felizes quando eles passam no vestibular!

We hold those who are on the tightest of schedules in reverence; the busier you are, the higher your status as a human being.

Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

In motivating people, you've got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example - and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved.

Nothing consumes time like nothing.

One habit I have not yet succeeded in getting rid of: the inveterate one of feeling that when at home I must sit at my desk for so long each day to write, not letters whether of business or of friendship, but printable stuff, even when there is no idea of publishing connected with it. If I have failed to do it, I feel morally hang-doggy and physically unclean.

Whatever is produced in haste goes hastily to waste.

Today people just go on working, working and working. Not because they are creating something fantastic, but simply because they have to work, otherwise they don't know what to do with themselves.

it is singularly unpleasant—for you and for those at the receiving end. It is also counterproductive and therefore inefficient.

Hard work may pay off in the long run, but the benefits of laziness are immediate.

Una casa limpia es señal de una vida desperdiciada.

Realize that you won't be able to bring the same focus to everything in the beginning. There won't be enough people or enough hours in the day. So focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.

focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.

So focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.

If unwilling to rise in the morning, say to thyself, 'I awake to do the work of a man.

In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm? But this is more pleasant. Do you exist then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion?

Spend not the remnant of thy days in thoughts and fancies concerning other men, when it is not in relation to some common good, when by it thou art hindered from some other better work.