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

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

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

We must use time creatively.

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.

I’ve actually not read any books on time management.

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Well begun is half done.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

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

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

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

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.

He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.

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

We live in a time-crunched world, and just about everything we do seems to be urgent.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

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

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Only those who want everything done for them are bored.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

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

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

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

When asked, ‚How do you write?‘ I invariably answer, ‚one word at a time.‘

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

Time is the least thing we have of.

Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.

Delay is preferable to error.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Your life must be a progression towards ownership – first mentally of your independence, and then physically of your work, owning what you produce.

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

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

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

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

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

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

Always do whatever’s next.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

The truth is, anyone can start projects. The world is full of just-started projects that looked great at the time but were never completed.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

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

Nobody likes to have trouble. The moment we get a hint that it’s coming, a common response is, ‚Oh no! Not again!‘

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

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.

If I’ve got something do. I’m going to attack it. I’m going to attack that stress.

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

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

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.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

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

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

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

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.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.