Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.

The one thing I regret was that my work required an enormous amount of my time, and a lot of travel.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

The Internet is a big distraction.

Never confuse motion with action.

I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don’t have to think about money. The best thing you can buy with money is freedom, time. I don’t know how much I earn a year. I have no idea. I don’t know how much I pay in taxes.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

Make measurable progress in reasonable time.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

In twenty years I’ve never had a day when I didn’t have to think about someone else’s needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

I usually get up at 3 A.M. I don’t require a lot of sleep, and if I get tired, I’ll take a powernap during the day.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

No man goes before his time – unless the boss leaves early.

Time is the least thing we have of.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

I like to work.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say ‚first alarm clock‘ because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup.

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.

Time is more valuable than money, because time is irreplaceable.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.