Hilary Mason Quotes

I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

You're on set for 15 hours, and then you go home and make sure you're posting the right stuff on social media, and then you answer your e-mails. It never stops.

I'm an e-mail junkie though I'm trying to read my in-box only twice a day and to answer all at once.

I try to get as close as I can to cleaning out my inbox every night.

I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it.

Social media is great because you can get information out there quick or you can use it as a ministry tool, but when you're on it all the time and you're not spending time with people and you're not sitting there looking at someone in the eyes and asking, "How are you doing?" that's when it's out of balance.

The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential.

Do not put off today's work until tomorrow, lest work accumulate and you achieve nothing.

One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.

I've used Twitter now and again to try to figure something out; it's an amazing resource. But I think you have to use it judiciously: it's a self-selected group, so it's important not to start thinking of it as the whole world.

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."

The checklist is one of the most high powered productivity tool ever discovered.

I don't have the time. It would take me too long to go through all of the math.

People who know me well have learned to insist that I commit to obligations by opening my laptop and putting them onto the appropriate calendar or list - a verbal agreement and a promise to remember won't work.

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 know, there has never been a 24-hour period in five years when I have not responded to e-mail at Facebook. I am not saying it's easy. I work long hours.

One of the problems that exacerbates procrastination is the feeling that you have lots of different things to do and no clear sense of which matter more, when they should be done, etc.

The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.

Saving time, it seems, has a primacy that's too rarely examined.

There's a lot to do. There's a lot to do. More than I even thought.

Oh god, I wish. I really wish. If I'm time-poor, which I usually am, that's the first thing to go. And I know it shouldn't be, I know I should be really regular, but I like to get it done as quickly as possible.

Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.

I was late once and it cost me $50,000. I figure it was cheaper to wear two watches.

Do I want to spend my diminished working hours writing or answering email? Now I have somebody read through them. If someone has something really important to tell me I write back. Otherwise they get the auto reply.

I really don't have time "to Twitter," it's not something that should grab your day. That's a big misconception, actually, about the whole service. You don't go out of your way to tweet, you just post when you've got something. Hopefully, not while you're driving. It complements your life more than takes over your life.