Donald Hall Quotes

I don't take off as many days as most other producers and songwriters, so I'm working every single day, and I do songs every day. So it's just about finding time, scheduling, getting in and cutting the records. I make it happen and that's the name of the game. It's no excuses - you gotta figure it out.

I like to work for four or five hours a day. I aim for seven days a week.

If I waited to be inspired to go to the gym, I'd never get there. I schedule my exercise time; I schedule my work time. This is especially important if you have a day job as I did while writing my first seven novels.

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

I think it takes a lot of desire because I think a lot of people who've never written books don't know quite how hard it is to stick with, to put in the amount of time and just make the commitment to just sit there every day and do it while everybody else is out having fun.

I have always worked long hours and very hard. It is the way I am. Same as always. Up about seven and get to bed about 12 to 1, something like that.

Inspiration comes of working every day.

I can control how much work I put in for me to be consistent.

Every day I'm not working or writing is a wasted day to me.

Every day, for 1,000 days, I made a video. I never missed a day, not even once. I don't know how I did it.

I know the most important faculty to develop is one for hard, continuous and varied work and living; but the difference between knowing this and doing anything consistent about it is often abysmal.

I work every day - or at least I force myself into office or room. I may get nothing done, but you don't earn bonuses without putting in time. Nothing may come for three months, but you don't earn the fourth without it.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing.

All successful individuals have become such by hard work; by improving moments before they pass into hours, and hours that other people may occupy in the pursuit of pleasure.

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

I trained 8 hours a day 7 seven days a week and I had 2 weeks off in a year.

You should just enjoy it, but as soon as you decide that it is going to be your career, no matter whether you want to be a doctor or an architect or anything else, you need to work 5 hours a day.

One of the greatest resources people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great things. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction.

When you step on the treadmill, make a commitment. Do, say, 3 miles a day. And don't get off until you finish. It doesn't matter what speed you're going. Just don't get off.

No matter what I'm doing, I'm training. I'm training every day and I think that's something I won't lose - no matter what I do, no matter what event I'm at, I always find a way to train. It's just something that I love to do.

I can handle a lot of work. I've always been able to. I'm a very focused individual. I come to my studio at about 7:30 in the morning and exit almost 5:00 P.M. In that time, those eight or nine hours, it's kind of laser focus on whatever I'm working on. There aren't really any distractions or anything.

If I give myself a chore, for instance, when I was writing the songs for Shameless, I said to myself, Now, every day for 90 days you have to write a song; good, bad or indifferent. So that was really helpful.

When the time comes to work, I work.