Hilary Mantel Quotes

Never begin the day until it is finished on paper.

I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years'.

Goal setting should be part of your daily and weekly routines and should not be based on a calendar year or month.

In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day?

I can't just react on the strength of an email and three pages of synopsis, and say I'm going to take off for three months of my life.

I think three-to-five years ahead minimum. I have a short-term plan, a five-year plan and a decade plan.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.

I'm a very thoughtful, forward-thinking, planner kind of person. I love Excel spreadsheets and five-year-plans, and I love to review every year how my New Year's resolutions went.

He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.

Multitasking is a part of my everyday life.

I plan my life in 15-minute sections.

It's fascinating for us women to begin looking at our lives in five-year plans. It really does help you keep on track. If that's too hard, start with a two-year plan.

Every morning at seven o'clock [you] spend an hour and a half figuring out what you are going to do to get on the news that night.

When I come into the office, the first thing I do is I plan out what I want to accomplish that day. I write it down in my notebook and make sure I accomplish it before I leave that day.

Every day is sort of a jigsaw puzzle. You have to make sure that you're putting the most important things first.

If you do a good job right now, today, then tomorrow will take care of itself. That's all you can do.

You can't think about what you're going to do in the future until you've done things in the present.

The first fifteen minutes of your day should be spent planning your day. Set specific goals as to what you will accomplish. These clear goals will give you focal points on which you can govern your actions and provide your with a template you can live your day from.

If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?

Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.

If you don't have a plan, days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years, and before you know it you're looking back saying, I should've had a plan.

Do each day all that can be done that day. You don't need to overwork or to rush blindly into your work trying to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible time. Don't try to do tomorrow's or next week's work today. It's not the number of things you do, but the quality, the efficiency of each separate action that count. To achieve this "habit of success," you need only to focus on the most important tasks and succeed in each small task of each day.

Don't live like there's no tomorrow because tomorrow always comes.

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.

Don't start your day until you have it finished on paper first.