“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” -Paul J. Meyer
At some point in our life or another, we may fall into a productivity slump. We want to do more, and manage time better but we are not sure how to do that. Sometimes we do not feel inspired to make any changes.
Perhaps things are going just fine but you are looking for some inspiration to begin your week with.
I recently wrote a post titled 20 practices that can make you super productive. You can read it here. I decided to take the inspiration from the post and convert it into a slideshare. It took me some time to put together this slideshare and I hope you enjoy it!
Right after the slideshare, the post goes into 28 inspiring quotes on productivity. These quotes have inspired me over the years and I hope they inspire you too.
SLIDESHARE
28 INSPIRING QUOTES ON PRODUCTIVITY
1. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”― Lao Tzu
2. “Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.”– Denis Waitley
3. “Consider everything an experiment.” ― Corita Kent
4. “Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”- Peter Drucker
5. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”– Anne Frank
6. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus” ― Alexander Graham Bell
7. “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
8. “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”― Will Rogers
9. “Luck is not chance, it’s toil; Fortune’s expensive smile is earned.” – Emily Dickinson
10. “Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Picasso
11. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
12. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”― Mahatma Gandhi
13. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee
14. “Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.” ― Peter F. Drucker, Management
15. “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”-Stephen Covey
16. “Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” – Caterina Fake
17. “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” – Zig Ziglar
18. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”– Martin Luther King, Jr.
19. “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”-Chinese Proverb
20. “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” – David Allen
21. “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”– Eva Young
22. “Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”– Peter Drucker
23. “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King
24. “Think of many things; do one.” – Portuguese proverb
25. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”– Wayne Gretzky
26. “To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth
27. “Happen to things, don’t let things happen to you.”- Stephen Covey
28. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”- Benjamin Franklin
Now over to you!
Which quote is your favorite?
Let me know in the comments below!
Harleena Singh says
Hi Harish,
Loved this post, and I think you know why! Because I love quotes, especially picture quotes that I always share on my post and my social media profiles too – they add so much more meaning to what you want to say, isn’t it? 🙂
I enjoyed your slideshare – apt points and quotes to support each one. The best one is something I always believe in – to eat the frog, first thing in the morning, and the largest, ugliest one! You get SO much done if you somehow manage to follow that advise of Brian Tracy, which even Mark Twain said long back.
However, I guess we all have our own ways to chalk out and work on our productivity levels. What might work for one, might not for another, but in general all of these work well if you follow them. Breaking your work into small bits, and keeping achievable goals works best, and never forget to give yourself a pat on the back for your accomplishments too (something we often forget doing!)
Ah…sleep is essential, something bloggers mostly need to take care of, and learning to say no to distractions and spending useless time on social networking sites – all a huge NO for being productive. I guess most people know all of these things as one reads about them, but fail to follow them – so this is surely a good reminder, and I’d be pinning this post so it reaches more people.
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Harish says
Thanks a lot for your comment, Harleena!
I completely with you about great quotes! I absolutely love quotes too and if there is a great picture with it, all the better. Like you said, a picture makes it more meaningful. If a picture is worth a thousand words and these words are themselves worth a lot in meaning, then combining them gives us the best of both worlds! 🙂
I agree that eating the frog is a big one. Just getting it out of the way seems to clear up the energy to do so much more and feel much better. When that frog is looming over the head, it creates anxiety and worry that trickles into every other task of the day. So why not get that taken care of the first thing in the morning.
Yes, it is best to customize and build our own productivity routines. I agree that what works for one does not work for another. I think you are right on with that. When people see lists, they feel like they may need to implement them all. In reality, I believe lists give us options to try out some things and see for ourselves if something works. Then we can take the aspects that work for us and keep implementing them. I like what you said about people knowing these things but still sometimes fail to follow them. I think that is the real issue. We know what to do but to implement habitually is an entirely different matter. But hopefully, posts like these can remind people of something that they wanted to implement all along but forgot or got too busy.
Thanks so much for your support!
Harish
Alli Polin says
Excellent! Love the images and the quotes too. “Consider everything an experiment” has been a critical one I’ve used to help my clients see that the quest for perfection isn’t helping them to create success but instead freak themselves out. Experiments give us the freedom to learn, adjust and grow and not feel the pressure to get it right the first time.
This is a great afternoon pick-me-up! Look forward to sharing!
Thanks!
Alli
Harish says
Thanks a lot for your comment, Alli!
“Consider everything an experiment” has been a big one for me too. I worked in a bio-research setting for a long time in the past and literally had to reconfigure my thinking. There were some interesting new beliefs and ideas that experimentation/testing instills in a person. The first one was getting over the “good question” and “bad question” bias and to look at every question and hypothesis with some merit. I had to reconfigure my thinking to make it more data-driven from belief and bias driven. Because inevitably, the very next question after “I believe this may be true” would always be one about data and experiments to support that claim. This has not been a slam dunk for me and I still need to remind myself to continually experiment and try out better things with my writing and creativity. But like you mention, the understanding that we can try something out and it is ok to gat results that do not support the hypothesis and even ok to fail is the big takeaway from this.
Thanks!
Harish
ikechi says
Wow! Harish I love your quotes and the pictures. I just had to pin some of the pictures; this is an awesome post. You have done a swell Job of creating a productivity booster. I also looked at the slide share and will say with no doubt that you a genius.
All of these quotes written do have great insight if you consider there words. Thank you for sharing. Thumbs up
Harish says
Hi Ikechi,
Thanks a lot for your comment and thanks for your kind words!
It makes me very happy to know that you enjoyed the post and also the slideshare. Having visual content along with the quotes and other writing makes it all the more relevant and approachable. And yes, I agree that these quotes have great insights locked up inside then and if we ponder and implement some of the ideas in them, we can greatly benefit.
Thanks again!
Harish
Ravi Chahar says
Hi Harish,
In our life there are many things which matter a lot. When it comes to motivation then people need to be motivated. There may be any person to motivate them or may be something else. The quotes you have listed above are really amazing and inspiring.
People need to follow them as from a single step people will reach to their goal.
Working hard is not enough, people should concentrate on the right thing so that they can get positive output from their input.
People shouldn’t wait for the right time to start anything. It just whenever you think about doing anything then its the time to do that.
Thanks for sharing these great quotes with us.
Hope you are enjoying today.:)
~Ravi
Harish says
Hi Ravi,
Thanks a lot for your comment!
I agree that people need motivation sometimes. And quotes and with pictures have a great effect in motivating people. Sometimes people get motivated through role models and sometimes they need other things like you mention. I agree and I think everyone of us needs motivation at some point or another.
I like what you mentioned about focusing on the right thing. This is the one important thing that people sometimes miss while working hard. I have done it too so I can say with personal experience that spinning the wheels and working harder does not always solve the problem. We need to refocus and readjust the direction that we are setting sail to get to the right destination so that we do not end up in a place that we do not want to be at.
Thanks again for stopping by,
Harish
Larry Frank says
Hi Harish,
It’s such an interesting article with pictures quotes. Quotes are one of those things that motivate me the most. This article is no doubt a motivator to me.
Thanks for sharing.
Harish says
Hi Larry,
Thanks a lot for your comment! I am very glad that you liked the post. I love picture quotes too…I agree that they are very motivating.
Thanks for stopping by,
Harish
Adrienne says
Hi Harish,
I do love quotes and especially when they’re placed on images. They just catch my attention better plus they are just enjoyable to read.
Anything that will inspire and motivate me I’m all in. Now productivity is definitely one that stands out as well. I’m oftentimes asked how do I do everything that I do on a daily basis but I think we are all different. What works for me might not work for someone else. I think we all just have to kind of find our own place and what works best for each of us.
So the quotes and definitely motivating and I appreciate you sharing them with us.
Hope you’re enjoying your week and I’ll be sure to share these as well.
~Adrienne
Harish says
Hi Adrienne,
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting! I agree that quotes that have pictures do better in catching our attention. They also do better on social media. I love to make quotes with pictures and have been doing so for a little while now. It is a lot of fun to move different typefaces and arrange them on a suitable picture. Sometimes the results are better and sometimes I have to do them over. I think that it is a good idea to go for visibility and readability. Having a great quote also helps 🙂
I like what you said about everyone being different and different things work for different people. I think that sometimes people forget that and try to fit tips that do not work very well for them and get frustrated with them. One example is getting up very early in the morning and doing creative work. While that works great for some, for some it can be a huge challenge and even unproductive. Some of us do our best work in the evening and some of us even may do our best work very late at night. It is simply a matter of finding our unique strengths and finding the place that works for us as you mention.
Thanks again and have a great week!
Harish