Quotes About Productivity

The absence of a grand schedule removed the constant fear of falling behind that many projects create and replaced it with small but frequent payoffs that we were making things better.

I couldn't help but consider what Washington Roebling, one of the engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge, once wrote: "Man is after all a finite being in capacities and powers of doing actual work. But when it comes to planning, one mind can in a few hours think out enough work to keep a thousand men employed for years."2

self-knowledge. You can't be productive as a creator if you're not paying attention to your own behavior and cultivating the unique wonder in this universe that is you.

Urgent problems were assigned to the developer with the least on his plate, but as these issues accumulated, I worried we'd spend more time doing maintenance than new work. All services require maintenance, but when you spend more time maintaining than growing, something is wrong.

Rarely did I think our work suffered because we were working remotely. But I did have times where I thought our work would be even better if we were in the same place and time more often.

Things that are less fun to do are usually harder to do, which means the pile isn't ordinary work but a pile of unloved, unwanted, complex work: 1. We do things we like first. 2. We do things we don't like last. 3. The things we don't like tend to be harder. 4. Late changes have cascading effects.

A good sign as a leader is when output is high and meetings are short.

It's a shockingly recent notion that work and play should be mutually exclusive things. We learn about ourselves and each other through play, which helps us work together.

The most dangerous tradition we hold about work is that it must be serious and meaningless.

1. Break assignments into smaller pieces 2. If there is no progress, go to #1 and repeat.

Yes, Ray Bradbury did write 25,000 words of Fahrenheit 451 in just a few days. But what's often not told about that amazing burst of productivity is that he later revised the book several times over the course of a year, expanding its length and heavily editing it, before it reached its final published form. In every legendary story of bursts of creativity there is a dance somewhere if you look carefully.

Product creators are the true talent of any corporation, especially one claiming to bet on innovation. The other roles don't create products and should be there to serve those who do. A classic betrayal of this idea is when the IT department dictates to creatives what equipment they can use. If one group has to be inefficient, it should be the support group, not the creatives. If the supporting roles, including management, dominate, the quality of products can only suffer.

well it's almost noon and i've done nothing all day, all my great plans shot to hell, of getting up at 7 and writing 3 new poems 1 new story 5 letters of sending out submissions to 4 new magazines and making several phone calls all by noon – so i'll just keep drinking coffee and reading from the stack of books on my kitchen table and maybe i'll go catch a flick and maybe just maybe i'll get half as much done tomorrow.

importance, essence, and averaging. The importance of diversity in complex systems is the central theme of this book. Why does diversity matter? What roles does it play? I show that diversity has many roles and effects. Diversity can provide insurance, improve productivity, spur innovation, enhance robustness, produce collective knowledge,

The activities you spent your time on yesterday were the things that were important to you. Calendars don't lie.

Procrastination isn't task management, it's feeling management.

A Polish man is hired to paint lines on the highway. On the first day he paints ten miles, and his employer is amazed. On the second day he paints just five miles, and on the third day he paints only one mile of road. Disappointed, his boss asks, "What's the problem? Why are you painting less and less each day?" The Polish man replies, "Well, every day I have to walk farther and farther to get back to the paint bucket.

Q: What's the biggest problem working in a paperless office? A: Needing to shit.

Hmm. You know, nobody gives me the time, either. I have to make the time, set priorities, discipline myself to get my writing done each day, no matter how tired I am.

What may be done at any time will be done at no time.

The start of the day is often the best time to get things done. This is somewhat related to willpower.

I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.

I like to have fun all the time, even if I'm working.

I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit.