Quotes About Productivity

I firmly believe that we all need to find something to do in our lives that stops us from eating the couch.

What is it about the American obsession with productivity and responsibility that makes it so difficult for us to allow ourselves a little time to solve the puzzle of our own lives, before it's too late?

It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case if that I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something

There are so many good reasons to stop complaining if you want to live a more creative life.

So you are industrious, but not original?

Done is better than good." I

Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes—but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists often decide in advance that the end product is never going to be satisfactory, so they don't even bother trying to be creative in the first place.

I do not know of any creative soul who does not dream of calm, cool, grass-growing days in which to work without interruption

Whatever else happens, stay busy. (I always lean on this wise advice, from the seventeenth-century English scholar Robert Burton, on how to survive melancholy: "Be not solitary, be not idle.") Find something to do—anything, even a different sort of creative work altogether—just to take your mind off your anxiety and pressure.

Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes—but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work.

Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind).

Never put away your labors while the sun is high, Alma, with the hopes of finding more hours to work tomorrow—for you shall never have any more extra time tomorrow than you had today, and once you have fallen behindhand in your responsibilities, you will never catch up." So

Besides . . . a mine is a terrible thing to waste.

People of that sort seldom fall ill; they are too busy pretending to be ill.

if one were efficient one wouldn't be depressed, and that if one does one's job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk.

told by Mellersh, on days when she had only been able to get plaice, that if one were efficient one wouldn't be depressed, and that if one does one's job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk.

that if one were efficient one wouldn't be depressed, and that if one does one's job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk.

I also understood that for more than forty years, workers' pay hadn't kept pace with inflation. Productivity had gone up. Profits had gone up. Executives had gotten raises. Couldn't we at last come together to make sure that the people who did some of the hardest, dirtiest work in the nation got at least a chance to build a little security? And

The measure of mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job.

And then, if I die anytime soon, at least they'll be able to say that I led a productive life and did all my work on time. I may be dead, but I'll be up to date in Space, Time, and Motion.

Why not? Because humans through their time-binding capacity are first of all creators and so their number is not controlled by the supply of unaided nature, but only by men's artificial productivity, which is the materialization of their time-binding capacity

At last no liquor was allowed to the workmen until after the day's work was over, and thus fatal accidents were prevented.

I waste so much time sleeping. And time is of all losses the most irrecuperable, for it can never be redeemed.

Men expect too much, do too little.