I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves.

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

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

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

The Internet is a big distraction.

Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.

We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.

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.

It’s pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

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

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren’t historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

I’m bloody awful at multi-tasking.

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you’ve blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

He that rises late must trot all day.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

If you want to be more productive, then start at the start: get there on time. Whether it is a meeting, a flight, an appointment or a date, it’s important to ensure you are there when you say you will be there. This may feel like an old-fashioned tip to give, but it has served me well for five decades in business.

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.

I do believe in the energy and the productivity of the American business world.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

I believe you never get tired by doing work. You get tired when you don’t work. When you clean your house, you don’t get tired; it gives you satisfaction.

Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere.

We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics – trying to play a serious part in the world – to a culture that’s really entertainment-based.

My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

And so I think that the idea of America working with other countries to solve problems is good for us, and it is part of digging us out of the ‚my way or the highway‘ approach that was evident in the previous eight years.

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

If I’ve got a problem with one of my clients that needs to get solved, guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to call them up, and I’m going to say, ‚Hey, here’s what’s going on. This is the situation. This thing went sideways. I didn’t expect it. Now it’s going to take me some more time to get you what you need.‘ But I’m going to do that upfront.

If two smart, intelligent, clever guys sit together on a table, and you both want the same, where can be the problem? We all want to be successful.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

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

It’s just human nature to try and figure things out. So, when we’re in the midst of a situation, we usually try to reason our way through it.

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

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

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

Well begun is half done.

I’m not as goal obsessed as I am process obsessed.

Give me something to assemble, I won’t look at the directions, I’ll try to figure it out by myself. It’s why I love Ikea furniture.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.

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

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.