Roxane Gay Quotes

I do occasionally get into that 'checking Twitter every five minutes' state - 'Please, help me avoid my work.' I have a writing room for when I get completely out of control, so I can put myself out of the Internet's reach.

It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves.

When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.

If you need five minutes every hour to look at tweets or to just surf the Internet, you need to schedule that into your schedule, allow yourself to do that. Because when people start procrastinating, what they've done is, they've tried to ignore that urge. They try to deny themselves time on Facebook or time surfing the web.

The Web forces me to be disciplined and not to waste time - but before the Web was invented, there were plenty of opportunities to do that anyway.

The biggest challenge is to stay focused. It's to have the discipline when there are so many competing things.

I tend not to look at Twitter in the morning; I try to force myself not to, for time management. I'll look at it on the way to work.

I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they're due. That's why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me - the column has to be done, and there's no getting around it.

When I write on Twitter, I do other things: I'm working, grading, or reading, and I'm procrastinating, and I'll pop on Twitter and be like, "Hey, what's up? Yogurt's delicious."

If you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, then someday you can do the things you want do when you want to do them.

While I am on, I can discipline myself to that extent. When I am off, I can't discipline myself at all. On the other hand, when I am off, there are so many things I like doing, it doesn't really matter.

There will be many times in your lives--- at school, and more particularly when you are a grown up---when people will distract or divert you from what needs to be done. You may even welcome the distraction. But if you use it as an excuse for not doing what you suppose to do, you can blame no one but yourself. If you truly wish to accomplish something, you should allow nothing to stop you, and chances are you'll succeed.

Halfway through any work, one is often tempted to go off on a tangent. Once you have yielded, you will be tempted to yield again and again... Finally, you would only produce something hybrid.

It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule.

As for Twitter, I've found that you have to learn how to make it add value rather than subtract hours from one's day. Certainly, it affords narcissism and distraction.

I'm terrible with my workout regime and following it strictly. I'm terrible with a healthy diet and following it strictly. I'm terrible on the weekends about getting up at reasonable hours and all of those things. But, when it comes to my work and the discipline it takes to get to work on time - I hate unprofessionalism.

The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.

I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.

This life is yours and no one else's, and if you spend your time looking at other people's pages, you'll never get anything done.

I have a great many shortcomings, but writing for something on time has never bothered me.

I set a goal for myself everyday when I write - 10 pages a day - and it's much harder because I'm too dumb to turn off my Twitter and everything so it's always on and it's a real distraction. It's a major distraction.

A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.

As a young boy, I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely, but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer, where one of the most needed qualities is patience.