Quotes About Productivity

You've gotta keep control of your time, and you can't unless you say no. You can't let people set your agenda in life.

The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything

You cannot fail, you can only produce results.

that the violence and plunder of kings could not compare with the productive and peaceful lives of those who minded their own business and cultivated their own garden.

Think small. Change your notion of "thinking big" to "thinking small and getting big things done.

O verdadeiro barômetro da inteligência é uma vida produtiva, feliz, vivida a cada dia e cada momento presente de todo dia.

If we do not live where we work and when we work we are wasting our lives and our work too.

A popular management term used to describe efficiency is called "working smart." We are told that if we work smart instead of hard, we will be more productive. But if we do work "smart" then we are likely to have idle time, and if we are idle we will likely be thought of as being lazy or worthless.

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.

Regardless what you do or what business you're in, time is more often than not your fiercest competitor.

When they [visitors to his studio:] learn about the six-week daily-strip deadline and the 12-week Sunday-page deadline, a visitor almost never fails to remark: "Gee, you could work real hard, couldn't you, and get several months ahead and then take the time off?" Being, as I said, a slow learner, it took me until last year to realize what an odd statement that really is. You don't work all of your life to do something so you don't have to do it.

In a purposeful organization run by good people, there's always more useful work than can be done in an eight-hour workday

After a couple of hours of intense work, I look at the paragraph I'm struggling with and know that it will be easier to finish it tomorrow. Other writers who talk about their routines usually make the same point—three or four hours a day is about the maximum that can be expected.

workload has become more "bunched," with long periods of inactivity and short bursts of intense activity. Both of these are error-inducing modes of operation.

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

You put things off and then one morning you wake up and say—today I will change the oil in my truck.

Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.

for academics who are continuously told to "publish or perish" to want to always create something from

It's the work on your desk. Do well with what you already have and more will come in.

They all forget that those who make the least noise do the most work. An engine that expends all its steam in whistling, has nothing left with which to turn wheels. Then let us cultivate silence. All that we can save in noise we gain in power.

To have lived an entire life of productivity, of self-sufficiency, having been a net giver, never a taker, never relying on others. To call oneself master, to hold oneself out as a source of expertise, to have had the courage and ability and discipline that added up to a meaningful, perhaps even noteworthy life, built over decades from nothing, and then at some point in that serious life, finding oneself searching for calories.