Thomas S. Monson Quotes

I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away.

It's amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.

Don't get too comfortable. We are here for a certain period of time, and how much of your life are you gonna choose to spend with distractions? How do you make your choices? What is important?

Whatever gets your goat gets your attention. Whatever gets your attention gets your time. Whatever gets your time gets you. Whatever gets you becomes your master. Take care, lest a little thing horn in and get your goat

I don't have the time to be bored.

It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the monkey is serious because he itches.

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you're in boom times.

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.

If everything is important, then nothing is.

As in all things, it is terribly important to have a sense of priorities in what you do. And to make certain that priorities do not clash.

Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like, or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy - very busy - without being very effective.

But as the business grows, you get more attention, and then you realize that the whole world is trying to get time from you. Which is amazing. But every time you give it to the world, you give less to what you’re doing.

The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass - when what we do doesn't contribute to what is most important in our lives.

I don't have time for any nonsense.

Don't confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy.

I know that I won't succeed at everything, every day. Some days have to be solely about my daughter. Some days I really try to be a good wife. Other days, I can take a few hours for myself and just do nothing but really focus on work.

He was a man too busy to flush toilets.

I'm learning that you have to make time for what's important. You have to fight to carve little pieces of happiness out of your life, or the everyday emergencies will eat up everything.

It takes an extraordinary amount of attention to manifest any ambition. But life intervenes - distractions and obligations pull us away from the ambition we originally had.

living life was like putting the beach into a jar. The point wasn’t to fit everything in; it was to attend to the most important things first—the big, beautiful rocks—the most valuable people and experiences—and fit the lesser things in around them. Otherwise, the best things might get left out

Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.

You confuse what's important with what's impressive.

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves.