Jeremy Rifkin Quotes

Play is just another version of work

I was reading an article in the 'New York Times;' it talked about being in the zone, and being in the zone you're so focused that time ceases to exist. It's when you think, 'Oh, I've been doing this for five hours and didn't even know it.' It's the difference between hard work and going, '12 o'clock, not moving.'

Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy.

The groove can go for like three days - once I'm in it it will just keep going until I'm totally exhausted. But that's how I like to work, I like to be away from everyone and just get in the zone, and stay there for as long as I can keep it there.

I find that if I get up and push myself, I get lost in what I'm doing, and I forget about everything else until I stop doing it.

I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration.

Follow your bliss. Do the thing where you sit down at 8 a.m. and then you realize you're hungry and you look up and it's 10 p.m. If you can find something you love that much, it doesn't matter what you do.

When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.

You are truly focused when you're so focused that you don't know you're focused.

Man works when he is partially involved. When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure.

It's easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.

There's no sauce for play like work.

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once.

The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine.

If the reader enters a kind of immersive experience reading a book, then I have to enter a kind of immersive state to do my best work.

Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.

Of course, if people do not want to do any work then it is better to start the game from a random position.

Perhaps it is this theory of all work and no play that has made the Marxist such a very dull boy.

It is only those who do not know how to work that do not love it. To those who do, it is better than play.

Now it is characteristic of play that one plays without reason and there must be no reason for it. Play is its own good reason.

While we're working, we must be conscious of what we're doing.

You can do anything with children if you only play with them.

I like to work fast and I like to work intensively.

In using the terms play and playfulness, I do not intend to suggest any lack of seriousness; quite the contrary. Anyone who has watched children, or adults, at play will recognize that there is no contradiction between play and seriousness, and that some forms of play induce a measure of grave concentration not so readily called forth by work.