John C. Maxwell Quotes

Decisiveness is the best way to get things done.

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.

Never confuse activity with productivity.

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.

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.

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.

The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have.

If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

You perform at your best when you are working continually on high-priority goals and objectives.

One of the secrets of getting more done is to make a TO DO List every day, keep it visible, and use it as a guide to action as you go through the day.

From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy. It's almost easy to want to sit down at your desk when you have a free five minutes and try to clear out some of the incoming emails rather than strip things strategically and foundationally and ask about what the most important objectives for you and the company are.

The key to having more time is doing less, and there are two paths to get there, both of which should be used together: (1) Define a short to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list.

I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. Each day I work through these lists, and that sequence of calls propels me forward.

When you make a to-do list, you should also make a to-not-do list. Warren Buffet was asked about the secret to success, and he said that it was saying no to almost everything. Some of those little tasks won't matter as long as you get the big tasks done.

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

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

Leaders understand that the real fight is the fight against time. There's so much to achieve in such less time.

As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.

With my responsibilities comes having to manage my time more efficiently.

Otherwise, my whole career has just been flinging myself at whatever is most overdue first and letting everything else stack up.

I have a crazy amount of different jobs, so the way I manage that is to not do more than one at a time. It's like old computers that had small memory chips, they would do something called swapping, where they would fill the memory with one task, do it and get it out.

Time management is really key for me.

Each night before I go to bed, I take out a small card and write a list of the things I need to do the next day in order of their priority.

From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy.

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.