James Surowiecki Quotes

We like to bully deadlines. Pick on them; make fun of them; even spit on them sometimes. But what a terrible thing to do. Deadlines are actually our best friends.

An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who talks a lot and makes wonderful plans but gets very little done.

Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all

I guess I would say, it's okay to put things off until the very last minute as long as you know you've got them under control.

The real key is time management and being able to focus on what you need to, on using every available minute to accomplish something that needs to be done.

You never put off until tomorrow or even this afternoon what you can do this morning. Attack the objective when your desire is strongest.

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.

Procrastination is probably my worst habit out of many. Especially when it comes to paperwork.

Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is currently estimated.

I always need huge amounts of time to do anything.

The biggest way to be productive is if you're procrastinating on another more important project.

Don't be a time manager, be a priority manager. Cut your major goals into bite-sized pieces. Each small priority or requirement on the way to ultimate goal become a mini goal in itself.

College is good discipline. That's what I learned there: pull an all-nighter, get it done, and get an A. I'm the biggest procrastinator, and I learned how to be an efficient procrastinator.

There just isn't enough time for everything on our 'to do' list - and there never will be. Successful people don't try to do everything. They learn to focus on the most important tasks and make sure they get done.

Deadlines are things that we pass through on the way to finishing.

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.

If we didn't have deadlines, we'd stagnate.

Do one thing at a time. Start the day with a list of things you have to do, and do the most important things first. Even if you don't get the list done, you've gotten the most important things done. So many people spend so much time on things that aren't important.

The distracting feeling of disbelief when you're finally doing something you've procrastinated on for notable amounts of time.

People that don't want to get down to the business at hand. Instead of just doing less, we have to find ways of doing more with less. That's the key to the future.

If only I could master that demon of procrastination that goes about like a roaring lion and devours all my good intentions, I should become the most punctual man in the world.

Do not put off today's work for tomorrow.

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow if tomorrow might improve the odds.

Your ability to select your most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop.