Quotes About Productivity

The one thing I don't consume during 'Today' - which surprises many people - is coffee. I find that a lot of water helps wake me up, without the buzz. I love coffee, but usually reserve a double espresso as an afternoon pick-me-up before settling in to do the weekend 'Nightly News.'

For me, meal prep is about doing the work when you have the time, which is usually on the weekend.

Part of the way the work world works is not so much creating a separation between your work and your free time, but creating the illusion of a separation between your work and your free time. Every day is the weekend for me, which means I'm always busy.

Until now, I've been a kind of binge-writer - I'll carve out five or six hours on a weekend day and make a large container of espresso and just bang out a lot of words.

I begin early in the morning and edit everything I wrote the previous day. I write until mid-afternoon. My goal is to write a chapter per week, and if I am not finished by Friday, I write on the weekend. I get a lot of fan emails and answer them every day. In the late afternoon, I attend to the business of publishing, etc.

People are salaried for the work they do, not the specific hours they sit at their desks. When you ding salaried employees for showing up five minutes late even though they routinely stay late and put in time on the weekend, you send the message that policies take precedence over performance.

If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond 'the office.' If they do say the office, they'll include a qualifier such as 'super-early in the morning before anyone gets in,' or 'I stay late at night after everyone's left,' or 'I sneak in on the weekend.'

I don't look at my emails on the weekend or after 6 o'clock in the day.

Walking in the morning improves my whole day. I think more clearly, my points of view are sharper, and I'm more decisive.

I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible.

If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you're nuts to stay there.

I'm not a big one for sitting by the pool doing nothing.

Anything is better than sitting around waiting for the right movie to come along. I lose my edge when I'm sitting around the pool not working.

People used to think that more population was bad for growth. In this view, people are stomachs - they eat, leaving less for everyone else. But once we realize the importance of ideas in the economy, people become brain - they innovate, creating more for everyone else.

Population is a strong driver of the economy as well as the quality of the labor force.

Our country needs to produce 250,000 net new jobs every month just to keep even with population growth.

Although I take the medication, which has made a huge impact on my life in a positive way, still, honestly, when I'm a bit sick is when I'm at my most creative.

I am kept awake by the list of possibilities for shooting more photos and deciding what I must prioritise next.

What does 'work' mean in this 21st, ultra-wired century, with its exploding new industries, low barriers to entry and endless possibilities? Is technology making our lives more flexible - or our days more endless?

It is becoming harder for us to stay on top of the onslaught - e-mails, messages, appointments, alerts. Augmented intelligence offers the possibility of winnowing an increasing number of inputs and options in a way that humans can't manage without a helping hand.

Meetings should have as few people as possible, but all the right people.

Achieving the highest possible return on human capital must be every manager's goal.

Pay your people the least possible and you'll get from them the same.

Ideally, one should have more material than one can possibly cope with.