productivity techniques Quotes

When I write I know that I'm going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need.

The most precious resource for businesspeople is not their time. It's their energy. Manage it well.

There are people who literally cannot start a project until the deadline is four hours away, even if it's a big one. And those people have a serious problem. My recommendation is set up mini-deadlines. You might say, 'Okay, here's my deadline after three days for this and there's another deadline for that and then a third deadline.'

I want to be efficient and effective in everything I do.

Make the most of time, it flies away so fast; yet method will teach you to win time.

One can only forget about time by making use of it.

Step by step, you make your way forward. That’s why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future.

Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.

Method will teach you to win time.

Just a few words on time management: forget all about it.

I'm always a great student of writers' work habits. Balzac sat at his desk dressed in a monk's robe, and he always had to have a rotten apple on his desk. The smell of the apple inspired him somehow.

The purpose of time management and getting more done in less time is to enable you to spend more face time with the people you care about and doing the things that give you the greatest amount of joy in life.

Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen's tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!

I have a hard time with scheduling, and with hunkering down and planning. That's always been a struggle for me.

The checklist is one of the most high powered productivity tool ever discovered.

I have a few methods that I use. One of them that kind of works but is a bit a boring is that I lock myself in the studio and I have four hours to work and come up with stuff. If nothing's sticking in four hours, then I can stop.

I procrastinate to a point where I'm filled with self-loathing and then I start writing. It's usually a state of self-loathing that gets me going.

There are a lot of books about how to get organized and a lot of books about how to be better and more productive at business, but I don't know of one that grounds any of these in the science.

I try to block a couple of hours of unscheduled time every day so that I can work on the day's most important projects.

I'm looking to get better, and anything that will help me accomplish that, I'm all ears.

It used to be with chocolate. I would put chocolate in my studio and say, "You know, Nat, there's this chocolate you can have if you get over there." And usually if I got over there, I would start writing. Sometimes I need get out of the house and go to a café and write. Sometimes I'll write with other friends to get myself going. And sometimes I just say "Ok, Nat, enough. Go one hour. Keep your hand going." I'll do whatever it takes.

I'm used to pressure. When writing must get done, I work in bed, on a bus, a train.