30 Real Quotes on Productivity You Can Relate To How billionaires, writers, leaders and philosophers think about productivity

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

— Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation Institute, self improvement industry pioneer

“A lot of productivity is capturing ideas. I use a wiki — it's more valuable than e-mail for running a company — and I have a page for every person with whom I interact frequently.”

— Garrett Camp, businessman, investor, and co-founder StumbleUpon and Uber

“The years after 50 can be a time of great productivity, meaningful work, pleasure, creativity, and innovation. It's a huge opportunity.”

— Jane Pauley, television journalist and author

“The productivity of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organization.”

— Ken Blanchard, author and management expert

“Understanding your employee's perspective can go a long way towards increasing productivity and happiness.”

— Kathryn Minshew, CEO and co-founder of The Muse

“The siesta provides a delightful detour from the working day and it also has a practical value as far as productivity is concerned. Winston Churchill had a good long siesta every day during the Second World War, and he said it was the thing that enabled him to cope with the pressure.”— Tom Hodgkinson, writer, editor of The Idler

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“One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we're idling in front of our computer screens.”

— Joshua Foer, author Moonwalking with Einstein, co-founder of Atlas Obscura

“I do not equate productivity to happiness. For most people, happiness in life is a massive amount of achievement plus a massive amount of appreciation. And you need both of those things.”— Tim Ferriss, author of 4-hour Workweek, entrepreneur, and public speaker

“In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement.”

— Jeffrey Kluger, senior writer at Time Magazine, author

“The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.”

— Tom Peters, business author and speaker

“The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.”

— Steve Ballmer, former chief executive officer of Microsoft

“Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.”— Bruce Lee, martial artist, actor, philosopher

“If you don't understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance. The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.”

— W. Edwards Deming, engineer, statistician, professor, author, and management consultant

“Make no mistake about it. Bad habits are called 'bad' for a reason. They kill our productivity and creativity. They slow us down. They hold us back from achieving our goals. And they're detrimental to our health.”— John Rampton, entrepreneur, online marketing guru, and founder of Due

“The best way to change it is to do it. Right? And then after a while you become it, and it's easy.”

— Ursula Burns, Chairman and CEO of Xerox

“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”

— Peter Drucker, management consultant, educator, and author

“On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.”

— Bill Gates, business magnate, investor, author, and philanthropist

“The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.”

— Thomas Sowell, economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” — Stephen King, author

“My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.” — Francine Jay, minimalist, author

“Every morning, I look through all my emails and star the ones that I want to have cleared by the end of the day. I have made peace with myself that I may not get back to all the rest. You get older and wiser and realize you can’t do it all. You can’t even begin to do it all. You have to be realistic.”

— Lorraine Twohill, chief marketing officer at Google

“I'm not formal and I'm impatient. So I think my team would say that when she starts tapping her pen and the leg starts moving quickly, that it's time to move on. I'm not good at long, drawn-out kinds of sessions.”

— Anne M. Mulcahy, former chairperson and CEO of Xerox Corporation

“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?” — Henry David Thoreau, essayist, poet, practical philosopher

“I’m a huge procrastinator and a fairly lazy person. Being lazy makes me more efficient, because I try to find ways that I can do the best work in the most minimal amount of time. I also know that I need pressure to perform, and procrastination is one of the levers for creating that pressure.”

— Julie Larson-Green, Chief Experience Officer, Microsoft

“I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if I wasn’t sitting in front of a computer typing, I was wasting my time — but I pushed myself to take a wider view of what was ‘productive.’ Time spent with my family and friends was never wasted.” — Gretchen Rubin, author, blogger and speaker.

“The way we measure productivity is flawed. People checking their BlackBerry over dinner is not the measure of productivity.”

— Tim Ferriss, author of 4-hour Workweek, entrepreneur, and public speaker

“Employees who report receiving recognition and praise within the last seven days show increased productivity, get higher scores from customers, and have better safety records. They're just more engaged at work.”

— Tom Rath, consultant on employee engagement, researcher, author, and filmmaker

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

— Alexander Graham Bell, scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator

"You've gotta keep control of your time, and you can't unless you say no. You can't let people set your agenda in life."

— Warren Buffett, business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

“[Money] doesn’t have anything have anything to do with the magnificence of a person. It doesn’t. What matters is what you make. Whether it’s a cake for bingo night or a costume for a saint or a wall of water — whatever you pour into this life is what makes you rich.” — Adriana Trigiani, author, television writer, film director, and entrepreneur

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