Productivity quotes about doing less, better

Decrease the time between when you wake up and when you start working.

The most common constraint for business growth isn’t access to capital but allocation of attention. You don’t need more money, you need fewer things to focus on.

If you don't have the time to do something, that something is just not a priority.

A big reason why we let stuff slip through the cracks is that we haven't written it down.

Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.

In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.

It's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

Love of bustle is not industry,—it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.

Tools and leverage are what create this disconnection between inputs and outputs.

Believe me, those who seem to be busied with nothing are busied with the greater tasks.

So you’ve got to love it and you’ve got to have passion and I think that’s the high-order bit.

Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of the trigger.

Learn as if you could not reach your object, and were always fearing also lest you should lose it.

You really just want a job, or a career, or a profession where your inputs don’t match your outputs.

Once you have the ideas, of course, they are no good if you don’t practice. You don’t practice, you lose it.

Earnest among the thoughtless, awake among the sleepers, the wise man advances like a racer, leaving behind the hack.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.

If anything is to be done, let a man do it, let him attack it vigorously! A careless pilgrim only scatters the dust of his passions more widely.

The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout; the tower of nine storeys rose from a (small) heap of earth; the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step.

Another thing you have to do, of course, is have a lot of assiduity. I like that word because it means “sit down in your ass until you do it.”

Do not be desirous to have things done quickly; do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.

Self directed learning (neuroplasticity) is a lot like exercise: the worthwhile forms are never easy but with time the process of moving into & through it becomes familiar, which helps us repeat it again & again.

Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now.