Quotes About Productivity

First, how do you inject free time into your schedule without simply quitting everything and looking like a slacker? Second, how do you effectively "explore" in this free time without having it degenerate into a morass of TV watching and Web surfing?

capture every task in a common list, and then review these tasks before making a plan for the next day.

an age of ubiquitous and addictive click-bait.

Your goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it's instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you're doing with your time going forward—even if these decisions are reworked again and again as the day unfolds.

Discipline #2: Act on the Lead Measures

If you don't attempt to weigh pros against cons, but instead use any glimpse of some potential benefit as justification for unrestrained use of a tool, then you're unwittingly crippling your ability to succeed in the world of knowledge work.

Treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated.

Entertainment-focused websites designed to capture and hold your attention for as long as possible...provide a cognitive crutch to ensure you eliminate any chance of boredom. Such behavior is dangerous, as it weakens your mind's general ability to resist distraction, making #deepwork difficult later when you really want to concentrate.

E-mail inboxes, in theory, can distract you only when you choose to open them, whereas instant messenger systems are meant to be always active—magnifying the impact of interruption

attention residue.

the individual's scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual's current deep work hour count.

The reason knowledge workers are losing their familiarity with deep work is well established: network tools.

the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear.

Stephenson sees two mutually exclusive options: He can write good novels at a regular rate, or he can answer a lot of individual e-mails and attend conferences, and as a result produce lower-quality novels at a slower rate.

organizing the raw materials of your work to minimize energy-dissipating friction

Mike's goal with his spreadsheet is to become more "intentional" about how his workday unfolds. "The easiest thing to do is to show up to work in the morning and just respond to e-mail the whole day," he explained. "But that is not the most strategic way to spend your time.

a good process-centric message immediately "closes the loop" with respect to the project at hand. When a project is initiated by an e-mail that you send or receive, it squats in your mental landscape—becoming something that's "on your plate" in the sense that it has been brought to your attention and eventually needs to be addressed. This method closes this open loop as soon as it forms.

big trends in business today actively decrease people's ability to perform deep work, even though the benefits promised by these trends (e.g., increased serendipity, faster responses to requests, and more exposure) are arguably dwarfed by the benefits that flow from a commitment to deep work (e.g., the ability to learn hard things fast and produce at an elite level).

una mente ociosa es el taller del diablo"... Cuando pierdes la concentración, tu mente tiende a fijarse en lo que no marcha bien en tu vida y a pasar por alto lo que sí está bien».14Desde una perspectiva neurológica, un día de trabajo que pasamos en función de lo superficial muy probablemente será un día agotador y perturbador, incluso si la mayoría de cosas superficiales que ocupan su atención parecen inofensivas o divertidas.

The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration

getting the most out of your deep work habit requires training, and as clarified previously, this training must address two goals: improving your ability to concentrate intensely and overcoming your desire for distraction.

A workday driven by the shallow, from a neurological perspective, is likely to be a draining and upsetting day, even if most of the shallow things that capture your attention seem harmless or fun.

The Principle of Least Resistance: In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment.

the people I knew who signed up for thefacebook.com were almost certainly spending significantly more time playing Snood (a Tetris-style puzzle game that was inexplicably popular)