Quotes About Productivity

If you're sick, take your sick day. If you don't take your sick day, know what your reward is? You weren't sick - that was the reward.

If you do not milk the cow fully, it falls sick.

There is nothing harder for me than to sit at the sideline, not being able to be productive.

If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?

Even a small reduction in errors and rework can have a significant impact.

We have to challenge the whole idea that it's acceptable for a society like Britain to have such a significant number of people who do not work one day of the week and don't have any possibility of improving the quality of their lives.

I write best late at night, when everyone in the house has gone to bed. There's something magical about that late night silence that appeals to me.

I have music on when I write. I don't like the isolation otherwise and find the silence deadening.

Decide where and when you want to write. I like space, and silence is an inspiration to me.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence.

Internet outrage can seem mindless, but it rarely is. To make that assumption is dismissive. There's something beneath the outrage - an unwillingness to be silent in the face of ignorance, hatred or injustice. Outrage may not always be productive, but it is far better than silence.

I can't write when it's silent. But the music can't have lyrics.

In my father's generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I'm wearing.

At some point, a group of people working towards similar goals will exhibit a distribution of performance.

The U.K. and the U.S. are quite similar in that they have high-productivity, English-speaking workforces who don't mind working long hours. Working in those countries is not a problem.

Here's a pro-tip: there's no such thing as a 'gym person.' There are just people who go to the gym. Similarly, there's no such thing as a 'productive person.' There are just people who do productive things fairly often.

I've heard Simon Cowell is awake all through the night... To be honest that is when I get all my work done.

When you and I go to work, and we use a computer to work and find that our work apps are completely onerous and the apps we use at home are quite easy, we wonder, why can't it be simpler, easier, quicker, and less expensive?

I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence.

I'm keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what's important first.

How many pages have I produced? I don't care. Are they any good? I don't even think about it. All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.

The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present.

The amateur tweets. The pro works.

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. That's a pro.