Jamie Zawinski Quotes

You can't work on 15 problems at the same time.

As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.

I have a crazy amount of different jobs, so the way I manage that is to not do more than one at a time. It's like old computers that had small memory chips, they would do something called swapping, where they would fill the memory with one task, do it and get it out.

From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy.

Probably the biggest problem I had was I didn't understand the importance of scheduling.

There just isn't enough time for everything on our 'to do' list - and there never will be. Successful people don't try to do everything. They learn to focus on the most important tasks and make sure they get done.

Perhaps the very best question that you can memorize and repeat, over and over, is, 'what is the most valuable use of my time right now?'

Never confuse activity with productivity.

You have to ruthlessly prioritize.

Do one thing at a time. Start the day with a list of things you have to do, and do the most important things first. Even if you don't get the list done, you've gotten the most important things done. So many people spend so much time on things that aren't important.

As the day goes on you get more and more tired. Even if people say they're afternoon people or evening people, it's always best to start out first thing in the morning with your most important task as opposed to your email, phone calls, or checking the internet. If you start out with that then basically you'll just do that all day long.

Your ability to select your most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop.

You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment.

Cecil's dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, "The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once."

As in all things, it is terribly important to have a sense of priorities in what you do. And to make certain that priorities do not clash.

If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise.

If you don't have time, the truth is, you don't have priorities. Think harder; don't work harder.

People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

I try to do one thing at a time to utilise my time well.

The more you have to do, the more you have only NOW to get it done. That's why busy people get the most done.

From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy. It's almost easy to want to sit down at your desk when you have a free five minutes and try to clear out some of the incoming emails rather than strip things strategically and foundationally and ask about what the most important objectives for you and the company are.

You do the things that need to be done according to priority.

People frequently fail when they try to do everything at once. They approach a massive project and quickly get discouraged. Taking small, but high-value steps takes less time, and you learn more in the long run.