59 Quotes Tagged: productivity

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
“Most of my time is spent in doing as well as I can the work immediately at hand. One hopes that by doing quietly and without parade as solid work as one can when one is occupied, one makes the best contribution possible to one's state.

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Most of my time is spent in doing as well as I can the work immediately at hand. One hopes that by doing quietly and without parade as solid work as one can when one is occupied, one makes the best contribution possible to one's state.

You need to be doing fewer things for effect instead of doing more things with side effects

In most cases, people don’t measure the productivity of knowledge workers and when we do, we do it in really silly ways, like how many papers do academics produce, regardless of quality.

For all of our complaining about the term, knowledge workers have no agreed-upon definition of what ‘productivity’ even means.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Poor kids, through no fault of their own, are less prepared by their families, their schools, and their communities to develop their God-given talents as fully as rich kids. For economic productivity and growth, our country needs as much talent as we can find, and we certainly can’t afford to waste it. The opportunity gap imposes on all of us both real costs and what economists term “opportunity costs.

Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.” — John Cleese

The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.

Working hard for something we do not care about is called stress, working hard for something we love is called passion.

Способность быть производительным прямо пропорциональна способности расслабляться.

I am sure I'd have made a better all-around man if I hadn't lost so much time just making a living.

Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Find a way to get started in less than two minutes.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.