Lock in on What Matters Most Quotes
Busy is not the same as productive. The man who finds the few actions that drive most of his results, and cuts the rest, multiplies every hour he works. This Productivity path holds history's sharpest quotes on priorities and time. Scroll through and put them to work.
Choose a Pillar of Greatness
Pick a Type of Insight
“The question I ask myself almost every day is, 'Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?'”
“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it's about how to get the right things done.”
“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.”
“The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”
“Your daily schedule reflects your deepest values.”
“By the yard, life is hard. By the inch, it's a cinch.”
“Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.”
“Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.”
“You have to balance your passions, not your time.”
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.”
“The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.”
“Concentration is my motto — first honesty, then industry, then concentration.”
“I would rather have one percent of the efforts of a hundred men than one hundred percent of my own efforts.”
“Say no to anything that is not a high-value use of your time and your life.”
“If it's important, schedule it.”
“The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.”
“Do not be busy. Be productive.”
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
“It is not enough to be busy. The question is: what are we busy about?”
“Focus on the things that don't change”
“Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.”
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
“Focus on essentials and try not to get distracted by things that don't add value”
“Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.”
“Smart people focus on the right things”
“When you're a one man show, you have to focus on the most important thing to get done today.”
“I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That's where the fun is.”
“Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far.”
“If you're on time, you're late. If you're early, you're on time.”
“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”
“Success is focusing the full power of all you are on what you have a burning desire to achieve.”
“Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren't adding value.”
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
“What's the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
“Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”
“There is no better measure of your values than how you spend your time.”
“You don't build the life you want by saving time. You build the life you want, and then time saves itself.”
“Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
“Money is time and time is life. When you take someone's money from them, you're taking their life.”
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”
“A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.”
“Days are expensive. When you spend a day you have one less day to spend. So make sure you spend each one wisely.”
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
“We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality time we put in.”
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
“Shift from being busy to achieving results.”
“Action expresses priorities.”
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything”
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
“He who is everywhere is nowhere.”
“Don't ever say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
“Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions.”
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.”
“It's not about time, it's about choices. How are you spending your choices?”
“Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.”
“You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.”
“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.”
“Don't major in the minors”
“My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time”
“Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost part of your life.”
“Time equals life; therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.”
“Creativity loves constraints.”
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
“It is better to say, 'This one thing I do' than to say, 'These forty things I dabble in.'”
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”
“Punctuality is the politeness of kings.”
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
“If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.”
“Effective executives do not start with their tasks. They start with their time.”
“Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”
“Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.”
“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically—to say 'no' to other things.”
“If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.”
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
“Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquility.”
“You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.”
“If you have more than three priorities, you have none.”
“You can do anything, but not everything.”
“Do first things first, and second things not at all.”
“When you feel like you're not productive, it's not necessarily because you're lazy or because you have bad habits, it's because you're not working on the right projects.”
“When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you.”
“Most people fail in life because they major in minor things.”
“Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”
“Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
“It's not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less.”
“Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
“Being productive gives people a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that loafing never can.”
“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.”
“The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.”
“Anything that matters requires your full attention.”
“The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
“Never mistake activity for achievement.”
“If you win on the big point, you don't sweat the minor ones.”
“Instead of saying 'I don't have time,' try saying 'it's not a priority.'”
“Time is the most precious element of human existence. The successful person knows how to put energy into time and how to draw success from time.”
“In a startup, things are always broken. The key is not to fix everything at once but to prioritize what moves the business forward.”
“To do two things at once is to do neither.”
“You've got to keep control of your time, and you can't unless you say no”
“There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.”
“Standing in the middle of the road is dangerous; you get knocked down by traffic from both sides.”
“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
“Productivity is not about how much you do, it's about how much you accomplish.”
“Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.”
