Chris Hardwick Quotes

There are certain parts of a classic nerd's brain that can destroy that person - obsessing about things to the detriment of everything else in your life. But those are the same tools that you can use to turn everything around.

I try to write in the mornings, as soon as I'm up and caffeinated, and to stay in the chair as long as I can be productive.

If you want to accomplish twice as much, you have to work twice as hard.

When you accomplish something, or you don't accomplish something, automatically your brain goes to the next challenge. That's your next focus.

I never look at the newspaper in the morning. That's the worst thing you can do with your brain.

Having my brain doing different work is helping me a lot in terms of retro-feeding from the other experiences. It makes me feel inspired, looking forward to the projects and wanting to work harder.

When you work, work. When you play, play. Don't mix the two.

Worry is a funky luxury when a lot has to be done.

I'm the kind of person [who] when I'm doing a play, and even when I'm working, I don't do anything else. When I'm working, I just work.

I cannot work and listen to Wagner at the same time, nor Mahler, nor Beethoven's late quartets. I enjoy listening to Chopin's piano music when I work.

While the work or play is on, it is a lot of fun if while you are doing one you don't constantly feel that you ought to be doing the other.

When it's time to focus in and play ball during the season, 100% of my focus is on that. When it's the offseason and I've got time to be away and I can do other interests - they don't conflict. I'm good at compartmentalizing. I can put everything in its appropriate box at the time and open it up when I need to at a later time.

I like to get to work early. Before my brain knows what I'm up to.

Take more time, cover less ground.

You must love your work and not always be looking over the edge of it wanting your play to begin.

I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it

It's not enough to be busy.

Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, you’ve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you’re doing, it needs to stop while you write... A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), I’ll write with earplugs in - even if it’s dead silent at home.

Make everyday as productive as the day before you go on vacation.

There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back.

I think Leonardo da Vinci teaches us the value of both being focused on things that fascinate us but also, at times, being distracted and deciding to pursue some shiny new idea that you happen to stumble upon. Balancing intense focus with being interested in a whole lot of different things is something that we have to do in the Internet age.

The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you're a bartender in the tavern of life. Don't get too comfortable and don't really listen to anybody else. Don't stand around with a bunch of writers and talk about writing. You know when you see plumbers at a plumbers convention, usually they're not talking about plumbing: they're talking about whatever it is that two men happen to talk about. They're talking about sports, their wives and children. I just tell my students, don't talk about writing too much, just go out and do it. Find out whatever you need to get to the mainland.

A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fingers.

A gentleman ... sleeps at his work. That's what work's for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library? So as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.

One of the keys to focus, and why I said cofounders that aren't friends really struggle, is that you can't be focused without good communication.