Quotes About Productivity

Calendar time is easier to feel than number counts.

Deadlines focus our mental spotlight on a choice. They grab us by the collar and say, If you're gonna do this, you have to do it now.

Research tells us that brainstorming becomes more productive when it's focused. As jazz great Charles Mingus famously said, "You can't improvise on nothing, man; you've gotta improvise on something.

Make it concrete: Look back over your schedule for the past week and ask yourself, What, specifically, would I have given up to carve out the extra three or four or five hours that I'll need?

increase an employee's productivity by one to two minutes a day, you've paid back the cost of wireless.

Peter Bregman, a productivity guru and blogger for the Harvard Business Review, recommends a simple trick for dodging this fate. He advises us to set a timer that goes off once every hour, and when it beeps, we should ask ourselves, "Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now?

What is the ratio of the time I spend solving problems to the time I spend scaling successes?

Atlas Shrugged also brought into focus the many inefficiencies of the unionized labour system. I had a union job on the pipeline—which was exactly why I had so much time to read. But there were times in Alaska when I saw a simple task being performed by three people because the union required one guy to drive a machine, a different guy to flip a switch, and a third guy to make sure the machine didn't run out of gas.

Despite what you may have learned last month, sustained writing is best accomplished as part of a balanced lifestyle, one that includes things like grocery shopping and speaking in complete sentences with your significant other. No

Yes, there is something a little defeatist about accepting one's slacking ways rather than trying to fix them. That's a worry, though, for another month. The healthiest, most productive approach to writing is to acknowledge your weak spots early on, and build a writing plan that plays to your strengths and works around your liabilities.

Leadership is the influence of others in a productive, vision-driven direction and is done through the example, conviction, and character of the leader.

Time, used correctly, is among your most potent assets.

Because if something is fun, more of it gets done!" -Luigi Lemoncello

I work hard, but I work from a position of rest.

Scrum is a lightweight framework designed to help small, close-knit teams of people develop complex products.

A scrum team typically consists of around seven people who work together in short, sustainable bursts of activity called sprints, with plenty of time for review and reflection built in.

A development team represents a significant investment on the part of the business.

What tasks I've completed since the last daily scrum. What tasks I expect to complete by the next daily scrum. What obstacles are slowing me down.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

The better performing of your business units are likely to be those operating the furthest below their full potential.

He had a reputation for clearing his desk of every file before leaving every day. Without a haystack, he felt, you can't lose any needles.

To get it all done I have to dim my brain, turn it down by notches like the flat-turn knob on a gas lantern, leaving only a nub of flame.

I like to be busy," she says. "And useful. I think those are pretty basic human desires—don't you?

You can always fix crap. You can't fix a blank page.