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.

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.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

I always have to be writing.

Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.

I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

You may delay, but time will not.

I’m a slow worker; I’m, I think, a steady worker.

I’d have to be superman to do some of the things I’m supposed to have done, I’ve been at six different places at six different times.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

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

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don’t believe too much into inspiration, only I’m waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It’s a little too easy to say that.

Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

My goals are so high that I don’t have time to relax in any way, shape or form.

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.

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.

Order is heaven’s first law.

I love being busy.

I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn’t want them either, so it worked out well.

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

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

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

I write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it’s almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

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.

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.

I’ve always liked being busy. If I have nothing to do for a week, it just makes me mad.

I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.

I like to do things quickly because I’m easily bored.

In the successful organization, no detail is too small to escape close attention.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical – one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

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.

Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.

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

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!

I have wasted my hours.

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.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

We must use time creatively.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

Writing is fun – at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That’s easy to manage.

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.