Malcolm Forbes Quotes

I'm 45 and I don't have time to spend two years of my life bringing in producers and dragging the record around the planet.

No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind; despatch of a strong one.

I also feel like I've learned over the years what is not important, and that is also great: to know what is pointless to spend your energy on, to be more specific.

To focus our mind on the task at hand-with fierce concentration-m akes for a productive use of time.

Time given to thought is the greatest time saver of all.

Our Lord was 30 years preparing for 3 years of service. The modern stamp is to spend 3 hours preparing for 30 years of service.

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.

We don't have meetings unless absolutely necessary.

Indecision is a major time waster; 80% of decisions should be made the first time they come up

Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

No man can promise himself even fifty years of life, but any man may, if he please, live in the proportion of fifty years in forty-let him rise early, that he may have the day before him, and let him make the most of the day, by determining to expend it on two sorts of acquaintance only-those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something maybe learned.

I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate-or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my 'ten minutes'. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.

Busy opinion is an idle fool.

I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.

I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.

Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

Nothing in business is so valuable as time.

He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little.

Once you have a clear picture of your priorities - that is values, goals, and high leverage activities - organize around them.

No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read.

I mean time management is a big factor in my life. I'm a very organized person. You can only do one thing at a time, so that's the main way I do everything. When I'm with my kids, I'm with my kids. When I'm directing a movie, I'm directing a movie. When I'm making Magic Mike, I'm making Magic Mike. So you just really have to fragment and focus.

Don't read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.