Productivity Guilt Quotes

Trying to find ideas is the hardest part of my job. You'd think it would be the most fun. Just sitting around reading whatever I want, going to cafes and libraries. But I always feel so unproductive. I think I was raised too well by my parents.

I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

I make myself a bowl of instant oatmeal, and then I don't do anything for an hour. Why do I need the instant oatmeal? I could get the regular oatmeal and feel productive.

Everybody I know is writing plays twice a year. It's sort of making me feel I am not up to much.

Whenever I am doing anything else, which is most of the time, even if it is not something like robbing a bank, I feel felonious. Writing is what I'm supposed to be doing.

For my part, if I'm working while flying, I'm often a bit relieved to be forced to shut down the computer on final descent. But I guess I'm a slacker.

Good old-fashioned, puritanical work guilt is, for me, a better colleague than any Muse. If I reach my weekly word target by Friday afternoon, then the weekend is guilt-free.

Some of us find 'relaxing' to be, in itself, nerve-racking. If we aren't doing something useful or, at least, that seems useful, we feel guilty, impatient, and mortal.

I used to feel that I spent too much of my time in my pajamas doing nothing, and I'd think 'in the time that I don't spend writing, I could raise a family of five.' In a lot of ways, being a writer is lonely and alienating.

I can pretty much justify anything as work if I'm reading the news or whatever.

I get really restless when I haven't worked for a day and a half. I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!

I always feel guilty for having a day off because I feel like I'm not being productive.

That's the rational premise behind my spending hours of billable time adjusting my Facebook preferences. The real reason, of course, for all this stuff, is that it provides a way to blow off work you should be doing, while creating the illusion that you are achieving something.