Adam Grant Quotes

I have always had trouble paying attention. When I was supposed to be at work, I'd be doodling. But then when I was home, trying to draw, I would be working on math problems. I never end up doing exactly what I should be doing at at any given time.

I couldn't understand why my productivity went down when I had deliberately made more time available to write. Then I realized it was because I wasn't flying as much.

Sometimes I decide I don't want to write because it isn't the thing for me to be doing right then, and I go do something else.

Procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.

When you drink coffee, you become very focused, and in fact, the key to creative genius is to be defocused.

Psychologists call it "defocused attention," where you broaden your horizons, let your mind float and drift a bit. Coffee keeps us sharp and alert. It's great if you're driving at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's not so great if you're trying to come up with the next violin concerto.

What scares me the most is that both the poker bot and Dropbox started out as distractions. That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little voice knows best.

I'm a long distance runner, and I get my best ideas when I'm out running. It also helps that I can't write it down immediately - if you hold onto an idea, other things will stick on it.

My secret is simple. I have a very short attention span, and writing lots of things fast appeases that very attention span.

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to - mostly the latter.

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

Creativity and insight almost always involve an experience of acute pattern recognition: the eureka moment in which we perceive the interconnection between disparate concepts or ideas to reveal something new.

When writers say that they need to 'set the mood' or 'get into the zone', those are all ways to procrastinate. Not prerequisites.

I just said, 'I need to do something because staying up and watching YouTube and late night TV is not cool,' so I just decided to write a script.

Getting to my typewriter is something I push myself to, but once I am working, I work hard.

The more time you have, you should dedicate it to do creative work.

Some of the most productive people in history have been self-confessed 'muck-middens,' as my husband would say: Agatha Christie, Benjamin Franklin and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few.

When I write, I try to turn my Internet off so I can't procrastinate through the Internet, but then I just get deeply involved in whatever I have just on my computer.

Never listen to music when you're trying go come up with a Big Idea.

I used to get my best ideas from being bored, and now, if I even think I'm being faintly bored, I have two million Twitter followers I can engage with. It's great, but I also think it's important to be able to let your thoughts flow and percolate.

I'm a full-time writer, which means I have the entire day to get my work done. But that can also be bad, because that means I have the entire day to get in my way.

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

I'm guessing the stress of having to write for a deadline can be inspiring. Sometimes, pressure is good.

My concentration span is truly that of a gnat. Some people have this ladder, and that's all there is - the ladder. I have the ladder, too, but there's a building around it with scaffolding, and lots of windows for me to peek into. Then suddenly I'll remember, 'Oh, there's the ladder. I should be concentrating on that.'

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.