Becca Fitzpatrick Quotes

I work seven days a week and I work about 12 hours a day, from the beginning of September to about the end of May; the school year. I take two days off, Christmas and New Year's, Thanksgiving sometimes - two and a half. And the result is that I bonded myself to my desk.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give.

I've learned I'm rarely able to stay at home and not work. If I try to 'just sit on my couch for a little while,' I am going to grab my laptop and just knock out a few more emails, or start sketching up some product ideas for TheMuse.com. So when I want time off, I schedule dinners out, movie outings, and on occasion a flight lesson from Groupon.

There's this emotion we all feel of being overwhelmed at times, feeling that you can't get ahead. For me it's self-imposed because I'm so driven and I'm always going from project to project.

I wish I'd known sooner that success isn't defined by who goes the longest without vacation.

A Superwoman isn't a woman who can do anything, but a woman who avoids doing too much.

Don’t sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much there’s nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you.

I don't ever rest. It's a problem and hopefully something I will get a better handle on in the coming years.

I don't know that anyone in the United States is taught to rest.

All I do is work, that's all my life is work.

I blame it [never taking a break] on my mother. She was a born entertainer. Leave the songwriting, the singing and all that behind, and I still would have found some way to be an entertainer. I would have never been an actress, though, because I realized early in my life, in like sixth grade, I was a terrible actress.

I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.

I build my life so that I don't wake up for anything. Ever. If you make me get up early to do something with you, I will hate you and resent you and figure out a way of never having to work with you ever again.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.

I would roll out of bed and immediately start working, and keep working until it was so late at night that I couldn't stay awake anymore. Then I'd go to sleep and wake up the next morning and do the same thing all over again. I did that every day for three years.

People who leave their own time out of their work cannot be surprised if their time fails to find them interesting.

Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to- to live.

For years, I'd say yes to almost everything, trying to be nice and generous. Feeling obliged to be of service to the world. Maybe also a fear of being forgotten if I don't. But I paid the ultimate price in doing that, because for all those years, I got almost no work done! Some famous authors have written about this: that if they said yes to every request, then they'd never have time to write another book again.

I hate being away even for a day. But I'm happiest when I'm working and have my own things going on, so it ultimately makes me a better mother and wife.

I put my children first, but I always keep my obligations or my commitments. You really have to do some internal work to know yourself, know what you're capable of. See how many meetings you can take a day or how much work you can get through in a day. Give it lots of proper time and respect, but also give yourself the respect of having your downtime, whether that means yoga, pilates, a meditation class, or a cooking class.

While I am proud of a number of accomplishments, there are real costs to being unreasonable. Long hours. Too little time with family. A near incapacity for, as they say, stopping and smelling the roses.

Give yourself time to work on your dream. If you want to start a stationery company or if you want to start an Internet site... Whatever it is, pick the thing that you love, and allot the time, but know and value the downtime as well.

I've found that giving 100% to your job isn't the same as giving 100% of your life to your job. Very often when I thought I was giving 100% of my life to my job, I was simply obsessing over something.

Sometimes the best way to get someone's attention is to stop giving them yours.

Every one of us has learned how to send emails on Sunday night. But how many of us know how to go a movie on Monday afternoon. You've unbalanced your life without balancing it with someone else.