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Productivity Quotes

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Productivity Quotes

“Done beats perfect. Give yourself permission to move forward.”

“Freedom is Chaos. It is the absence of structure, logic, control and discipline. A free person is a chaotic person. I don't want to be free. I enjoy my discipline. I like control. I like having a goal. I find it soothing to work hard. Freedom scares me. There is so little definition to it I wouldn't even know where to start. I don't like freedom. It's a ball of anxiety if you ask me. When I think of free people, I imagine hippies, alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless people, fat people and unscholarly teenagers.”

“We compete on various levels as humans. Popularity. Intellectual capacity. Social status. Titles. Monetary superiority. Physical strength and fitness. Beauty. Ability to get romantic partners. Power. Influence. Morality. Talents. Skills. Achievements. Awards. Recognition. Personal qualities. Even a nun, a priest of the highest echelon, and the religious worker taking photos with random children in Africa, are competing for superior morality and recognition for their selfless deeds. Just because your inherent needs for recognition differ from those next to you does not mean you are free of them.”

“You are sculpting yourself. Of course it's painful. Carving every detail you want in your life into the tender fabrics of your own existence. Your body, your mind, your business, your home. Is it not beautiful? How there are those of us that are willing to bear insufferable pain, all to achieve their highest form. And then there's the rest of the world, fragile creatures, porcelain dolls, the unscuplted masses. All too scared to bear the burden. Pain is the seed of power. If you can not tolerate it, you should not compete with those who will.”

“Power is the result of rigorous self-observation. Self-observation causes a higher degree of self-consciousness, especially of the things we do not like about ourselves, which causes us to change or inadequacies into strengths, and so we achieve power. Power comes from identifying your weaknesses rapidly and eradicating them for good. Assuming that you're correct is the fastest way to remain incorrect. You're probably doing something wrong somewhere, which is why you are in the position where you are instead of where you want to be. The more you ignore it, the worse it gets. You need to stop avoiding it and face the facts. Study yourself to study your weaknesses. And when you do, they will disappear. If I avoid the mirror I will eventually be unable to face it. If I avoid my balance sheet, it won't get any bigger. So I watch myself. I observe and I criticize. I exercise self-discipline and judgement, reward and punishment, a focused routine of self-evaluation.”

“If you work without being distracted, you can do so much in one hour. Something that is not even achievable in a month, especially if you are not living with a Procrasdemon – a blood curdling time-wasting machine.”

“People who understands how to convert their time into useful products do not complain of boredom.”

“there are no winners here. The farming businesses who rule these fields have got so big they are entirely reliant on one or two monopolistic buyers who screw them on prices and can bankrupt them at will. The money flows off the land to the banks that finance the debt on which it is all built, to the engineering companies selling the tractors and machinery, the synthetic fertilizer and pesticide corporations, the seed companies and the insurance agents. And yet, judged solely as productive businesses, focussing on efficiency and productivity (and ignoring fossil fuel input and ecological degradation), these new farmers are amazing - the best farmers that have ever lived. In the year 2000 the average American farmer produced twelve times as much per hour as his grandfather did in 1950. And this amazing efficiency means the end for most farmers. In the UK, the number of dairy farmers has more than halved from more than 30,000 in 1995 to about 12,000 today. In turn, the number of dairy cows in Britain has halved in the past twenty years. The amazing productivity of the remaining farmers and super-cows in demonstrated in the simple fact that milk production has remained more or less stable.”

“Decide when you want to leave work and you’ll know how many hours you have. Slot in what you need to get done by priority. Cal calls this “fixed schedule productivity.” You need boundaries if you want work–life balance. This forces you to be efficient. By setting a deadline of six p.m. and then scheduling tasks, you can get control over that hurricane of duties, and you can be realistic instead of shocked by what is never going to happen. Most of us use our calendars all wrong: we don’t schedule work; we schedule interruptions. Meetings get scheduled. Phone calls get scheduled. Doctor appointments get scheduled. You know what often doesn’t get scheduled? Real work. All those other things are distractions. Often, they’re other people’s work. But they get dedicated blocks of time and your real work becomes an orphan. If real work is the stuff that affects the bottom line, the stuff that gets you noticed, the thing that earns you raises and gets you singled out for promotion, well, let me utter blasphemy and suggest that maybe it deserves a little dedicated time too. Also, at least an hour a day, preferably in the morning, needs to be “protected time.” This is an hour every day when you get real work done without interruption. Approach this concept as if it were a religious ritual. This hour is inviolate.”