I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything – which as you know, always leads to something – cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego – its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

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

Working with a lot of people at the same time is a task. I really like making stuff and getting stuff done. One of the things I really liked about Facebook was that I could always move so quickly. I wrote the original application in, like, nine days at the end of January.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.

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.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

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

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.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

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.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.

If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.

I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

Someone once asked me, ‚How long does it take to do your hair.‘ I said, ‚I don’t know, I’m never there.‘

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

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

Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

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

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

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Spend more time in study and prayer. That’s the secret of successful evangelism.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

He that rises late must trot all day.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn’t handle that business then there were no privileges.

That’s one of the biggest things. Never being home, always traveling, having different interests and focusing on different things, just the time aspect of going back home and seeing them, you don’t have that at all. It was a big sacrifice but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

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

I’m very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

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

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.

I’ve been on a calendar, but I’ve never been on time.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

All great achievements require time.

Most people don’t have time to master the very mathematical details of theoretical physics.

Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.

Just on a practical side, if you wake up early in the morning – like at 4:30 in the morning – you’re going to have some free time to yourself to make things happen, to take care of things that are important to you.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen.

In my father’s generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.