Quotes About Productivity

What's the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all. Peter Drucker

I brought in a fragrance consultant to evaluate the most appropriate atmospheric scents for the kind of work we do here. She recommended a gentle blend of sandalwood and lavender, and it has done wonders for staff stress levels, not to mention fewer sick days. Many organizations are doing it now.

But it was a mental thing. He had gotten depressed thinking about how they hadn't found him yet, and when he was busy and had something to do the depression seemed to leave.

Though there was nowhere one so busy as he/ He was less busy than he seemed to be.

A person of limited intelligence but high conscientiousness can make a valuable employee; a person of higher intelligence but very low conscientiousness is almost unemployable.

White-collar professionals also use prescription drugs such as Provigil, Ritalin, and Adderall to boost their intelligence and attentiveness.

The secret of a happy life is to do work you enjoy and then you'll be too busy to know whether you're happy or not.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be done–how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful?

I fear that in this thing many rich people deceive themselves. They go on accumulating the means but never using them; making bricks, but never building.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Contrary to popular myth, great teams are not characterized by an absence of conflict. On the contrary, in my experience, one of the most reliable indicators of a team that is continually learning is the visible conflict of ideas. In great teams conflict becomes productive."1

in France, a capitalist democracy concerned with égalité, in 1910, 70 percent of the wealth was reinvestment wealth, held by the very wealthy—not productive wealth, distributed over most of the population.

We would spend every morning drinking rum and Cokes or Red Stripes for breakfast, to get our heads in the right space. It's a wonder we got stuff done.

I also learned to play Fruit Ninja on an iPad. It is quite hypnotic, and I hope one day to get past 100 points. I remembered that David Cameron admits to being an addict. I wonder if it helps him in his work. 'Great, just destroyed a pineapple! Reminds me, shall we send those grenades to the Syrian rebels?'

When I wrote 'Goose' I gave my assistant my password, she locked me out of Twitter, and I wrote the book in five weeks. Sometimes I fantasise about how wonderful life would be if I went offline, but I can't - because I really need affection and adoration from strangers!

My father did lots of things. He had an orange-juice factory. He did real estate. He did commercial selling. He was always up and about doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things and being adventurous. I always admired his self-discipline. He was very good at getting everything done. He was very tidy.

But I'm very happy to work within tight parameters, and when you know you have an actor for two days, and you have to get that work done in two days, that focuses the mind wonderfully.

I'm always wondering: Have all these time-saving devices actually saved us any time, or have they just created a million fetishes and obsessions that keep us from the quiet half hour we should be taking to sit and do nothing every day?

Every minute you spend looking through clutter, wondering where you put this or that, being unable to focus because you're not organized costs you: time you could have spent with family or friends, time you could have been productive around the house, time you could have been making money.

When we take care of ourselves, we are more effective, we are more creative, and we are more successful in a broad definition of the word.

'Inspiration' is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.

One word that seems to connect both leaders and employees is: 'outcomes.' Built into that word is the implicit and explicit understanding and agreement that effective actions lead to good outcomes; ineffective actions lead to poor outcomes.