Quotes About Productivity

We can always revise and revisit once we've acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.

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.

Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us . . . we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

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. What's important is the work. That's the game I have to suit up for. That's the field on which I have to leave everything I've got.

When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.

What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop?

Maugham reckoned another, deeper truth: that by performing the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch with his.

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.

overthink. Don't overprepare. Don't let research become Resistance. Don't spend six months compiling a thousand-page tome detailing the emotional matrix and family history of every character in your book. Outline it fast. Now. On instinct. Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic

Let the unconscious do its work. Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.

Do research early or late. Don't stop working. Never do research in prime working time. Research can be fun. It can be seductive. That's its danger. We need it, we love it. But we must never forget that research can become Resistance.

Tolstoy had 13 kids and still wrote War & Peace.

When we've got David Lean's eight sequences, we're home except for one thing: The actual work. Cover the Canvas One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP.

The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you're finished. The pro doesn't even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

Procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance.

Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it's the easiest to rationalize. We don't tell ourselves, I'm never going to write my symphony. Instead we say, I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.

That year made me a pro. It gave me, for the first time in my life, an uninterrupted stretch of month after month that was mine alone, that nobody knew about but me, when I was truly productive, truly facing my demons, and truly working my shit. That year has stuck with me.

Work—day-in, day-out exertion and concentration—produces progress and order. That's a law of the universe.

The pro doesn't even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

There were days that autumn when I had little energy to write or paint or even read. On days like that I felt like somebody had switched off the lights inside.

stop procastinating xx

I don't want to die as long as I can work; the minute I can not, I want to go.