Focused Work Quotes

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once.

The great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.

I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

When you get older you do one film at a time.

I'm always amazed by writers who say, 'Oh you know I had a half hour so I sat down and wrote a little bit.' I just need a real big chunk of time to sit down and focus. That's my process.

I play my best stuff when I am a little under the radar.

One man of tolerable Abilities may work great Changes, and accomplish great Affairs among Mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and … makes the execution of that same plan his sole Study and Business.

Shah Rukh has definitely been my inspiration. He is extremely focused in his work and is extremely ambitious.

Writers don't have lifestyles. They just sit in little rooms and write.

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

Give a man a clear-cut job and let him do it.

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment

I write by myself and then deliver the song. Everybody knows, 'Leave Ester alone when she's in her zone.' Give me a studio and the tracks, and I'll call you when the doctor is done.

The tough thing about writing is you go into a room alone, you close the door and you do your work.

As soon as I came in as leader, we had seven weeks to an election, so we had to be entirely focused on the job we had in front of us.

I'm capable of just putting my butt in a chair and spending nine hours a day studying poker. I took it as a full time job. So I think that it's a combination of being lucky, but also really studying, working hard and pushing myself to do everything I could.

So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write.

A work-only zone does wonders for your productivity. So, I prefer working at the office now. I spend 8 focused hours there, then I go home to be present with my family.

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.

Whenever I get a task I can focus on, I get excited for that.

To be productive and focused, the rugged individuals in our economy need health security so that our country can remain competitive and agile in the changing economy.

Morning is when I do all my best work.

No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance, if he is to shut himself up for a year to study science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he will walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life.