50 Inspirational Productivity Quotes to Fuel Your Day

1. Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year—and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!

2. Actually, the most productive time I’m in is when I have the freedom to make a creative mess; you too. I need room to be crazy, to make some mistakes, to brainstorm, to be chaotic, to go a little off the edge. That is going to be your most productive time.

3. Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent, and not enough time on what is important.

4. Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest.

5. Saying ‘I don’t have time’ really means ‘it’s not a priority.’ If someone offered you a ton of cash to do whatever you claim you don’t have time for…you’d probably find the time!

7. Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes in a day.

8. Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well.

9. Time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends.

10. If you don’t measure your time, it’s tough to stop procrastination or improve your productivity. Because if you want to manage your time better, you have to know where it goes first. How do you know your time? Keep an activity log. An activity log is exactly what you imagine — an hour by hour record of what you’re doing throughout the day.

11. To Eat that Frog is a time management term that means to do your worst task first. Every morning organize your tasks, and choose the biggest and worst tasks to do first. By doing this you will eliminate the opportunity to push it back throughout the day and not complete it.

12. Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.

13. Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.

14. I take time blocking seriously, dedicating 10 to 20 minutes every evening to building my schedule for the next day. Sometimes people ask why I bother with such a detailed level of planning. My answer is simple: it generates a massive amount of productivity. A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure.

15. Stressing output is the key to improving productivity while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.

16. First, one tries to identify and eliminate the things that need not be done at all, the things that are purely a waste of time without any results whatsoever. To find these time wasters, one asks of all activities in the time records: ‘What would happen if this were not done at all?’ And if the answer is, ‘Nothing would happen,’ then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it.

17. You don’t need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment.

1. I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the unsuccessful ones is pure perseverance.

2. Productivity growth, however it occurs, has a disruptive side to it. In the short term, most things that contribute to productivity growth are very painful. 

3. Over the long run, the unglamorous habit of frequency fosters both productivity and creativity.

4.  I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks, but I do fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

5. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

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

7. Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

8. Sometimes, things may not go your way, but the effort should be there every single night.

9. Productivity is not about eureka moments, your big break, pulling off all-nighters, and drinking Red Bull all day. If you want to achieve things in life, it’s about aiming for daily progress. You want to exercise, work, read, learn, study, every single day.

10. Consistency is the key! If you can’t be consistent, then you can’t be anything.

11. People often say that motivation doesn’t last long. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.

12. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today.

13. People like consistency. Whether it’s a store or a restaurant, they want to come in and see what you are famous for.

14. It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

15. The 90/90/1 rule helps you create vast amounts of productivity. It’s a simple rule — for the next 90 days, spend the first 90 minutes of your work day on the single most game-changing opportunity. Nothing else. Zero distractions.

16. Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.

1. If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.

2. If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.

3. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

4. It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

5. Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying positive attention to two things at the same time. What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.

6. You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

7. Don’t worry about breaks every 20 minutes ruining your focus on a task. Contrary to what I might have guessed, taking regular breaks from mental tasks actually improves your creativity and productivity. Skipping breaks, on the other hand, leads to stress and fatigue.

8. Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.

9. I began to discover that by focusing deeply on just one important thing at a time— hyperfocusing—we become the most productive version of ourselves. I began to view attention as the most important ingredient we can add if we’re to become more productive, creative, and happy.

10. You must remain focused on your journey to greatness,

11. The best way to drive performance in an organization is to create an environment in which information can flow freely, mistakes can be highlighted, and help can be offered and received.

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

13. There is no royal, flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it. For if I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I have been willing to work hard.

14. The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.

15. The best people on the planet in terms of creativity and productivity are not spending their finest hours addicted to distraction. They are doing work that matters.

16. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

17. When people think of ways that work to enhance employee productivity, their first thought often goes to sophisticated tools and platforms.  However, I believe there is a tool with a much lower barrier to entry that may improve employees’ productivity by enhancing their well-being. That tool is mindfulness.