Getting Something Done Quotes & Sayings

When it was done and I went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I've ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. I don't care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody ever gets enough safety. I've never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness. — Stephen King

I have an immensely understanding partner who does something creative herself, and we both need a lot of time alone. I structure my life around getting my work done, first and foremost. Everything else is secondary. That's the only way I've been able to do it. — Tom Bissell

There's a hunger in me that always wants to be creating and orating, telling people something and giving them information and getting feedback. There are so many questions that I'm trying to ask, and I'm still so far from being done saying what I gotta say. — Chance The Rapper

I'm definitely a character actor. I've tried to limit anything with a uniform because I've done it so much. There's a lot more I can offer. It's just getting people to see something else. — Brent Sexton

When you're a kid, getting lost isn't just an event or a situation, it's like a career move. You get this thrill of anxiety and fear and a feeling that you've done something that can never be undone. — Ryu Murakami

Senselessly pontificating about things does not get anything done, doing something about it does. — Murad S. Shah

About 85 per cent of my "thinking" time was spent getting into a position to think, to make a decision, to learn something I needed to know. Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into digesting it. Hours went into the plotting of graphs ... When the graphs were finished, the relations were obvious at once, but the plotting had to be done in order to make them so. — J. C. R. Licklider

There's a tolerance and this is a really big thing when it comes to really increasing the whole sense of getting something done and boosting the economy. Obviously not everything is going to be a bonanza, some things are going to be awful, but wouldn't it be great if we had a fantastic window dresser to do something with those windows on Fairfield green and those Victoria's Secret windows. I love girls in bras in panties, but these are just mannequins. Wouldn't it be great if some local artists got together and said, "Hey, Victoria's Secret, let's do something!" We need that. — Tina Weymouth

You're only poor if you give up. The most important thing is that you did something. Most people only talk and dream of getting rich. You've done something. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them. — David Graeber

Butterflies prove that God gives second chances. Because a butterfly spends most of its life as a caterpillar, scooting along on the ground, barely getting by. When a caterpillar sees a butterfly he thinks how wonderful it would be to fly. And then one day he gets tired. Very tired. He builds a little room, curls up inside, and takes a nap. Deep in his heart he wonders if maybe that's all. Maybe life is over. But one day the caterpillar wakes up, and God has done an amazing thing. The caterpillar hakes off the little room and feels something on his back. This time when he goes a bit down the tree branch he doesn't scoot like before. He flies! — Karen Kingsbury

When I'm done with something, I'm done. I don't go back and listen to and pine for my old albums, or the Lollapalooza days, or 'Psalm 69' selling millions of records. Maybe I'm really just getting old and mellow. — Al Jourgensen

The most important part of life is work, it's the flow, it's getting stuff done, feeling like you're doing something. — Penn Jillette

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done. — Susan Orlean

To know the right means of getting something done is virtually to have done it. — Mark Caine

Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me ... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just ... something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time. — Sarah Dessen

All these stupid rocks," I say, "what's your goal?"
"This isn't about getting something done," Denny says. "It's about the doing, you know, the process."
"But what are you going to do with all these rocks?"
And Denny says, "I don't know until I collect enough."
"But what's enough?" I say.
"I don't know, dude," Denny says, "I just want the days of my life to add up to something. — Chuck Palahniuk

When we know something that needs to be done but isn't currently getting done, we often say, I just need more discipline. Actually, we need the habit of doing it. And we need just enough discipline to build the habit. — Gary W. Keller

Doing or not doing something - they are similar. Both involve an action and sincerity. — CLAMP

We all need time to enjoy being alive without an agenda of getting something done. — Deborah King

Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out. — Natalie Goldberg

But when it gets dark, I'm off the hook. The day is officially rolled up and put away. I'm free to watch movies or stare at the wall, no longer holding myself accountable for what I might or might not have gotten done because the time for getting something done is over until tomorrow. — Abigail Thomas

I have a very hard time getting to rage. I always assume that maybe I've done something wrong and then forgotten about it. — Merrill Markoe

I had a history for starting something and maybe getting halfway done. Then I'd see the same thing I was doing on the bestseller list! My ideas were right, but I hadn't done them fast enough. — Lori Greiner

times better than getting a lot done on something that is completely unimportant but feels urgent in the moment. — Benedict Preston

I used to hate sampling, but it was basically because everyone was getting paid but us. But when they began to do the legislation and get it right, I realized that the kids just did something that, if maybe we were smart enough, we would have done it as well. — Betty Wright

America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy. — Samuel Eliot Morison

The stacks of pav have been sprinkled with chutney -
the top half of the inside of the bun is bathed in green chutney, the bottom with red garlic chutney -
and the assistant reaches out with one hand, in one continuous arc of his arm opening the pav, scooping up two of the vadas, one in each nest of pav, and delivering it to the hungry customer. I walk away from the stall and crush the vada by pressing down on it with the pav; little cracks appear in the crispy surface, and the vada oozes out its potato-and-pea mixture. I eat. The crispy batter, the mouthful of sweet-soft pav tempering the heat of the chutney, the spices of the vada mixture - dark with garam masala and studded with whole cloves of garlic that look like cashews - get masticated into a good mouthful, a good mouth-feel. My stomach is getting filled, and I feel I am eating something nourishing after a long spell of sobbing. Borkar has done his dharma. — Suketu Mehta

The truth of the matter is, these mundane tasks must be done. There is no getting around them. Almost everyone has to do a task on a daily basis that is less than fun. The key is to find pleasure in the task and to not wish you were doing something else while doing it. — Jennifer L. Scott

And yet sometimes she worried about what those musty old books were doing to her. Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists. The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself. That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren't left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical
because they weren't musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they'd done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn't know what to major in majored in. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I enjoy getting things done. My philosophy is the edge, the edge of something. There's where we have to go in local government, in not only the philosophy but the creativity in people around you. They have to go to the edge. — Richard M. Daley

There is a big difference between wishing you was doing something and the actual getting it done. And this wasn't no back room in a bar or glory hole where I didn't even have to look at who I was with. This was Kabe. — James Buchanan

Committee: A group which succeeds in getting something done only when it consists of three members, one of whom happens to be sick and another absent. — Abraham Lincoln

Damn. I'm getting fucked while practically standing on my head, and it's pretty superb.
I should be willing to walk away from my life just so I can have this done to me every day. It's definitely something to consider. — Georgia Cates

Our car is constantly in motion. It is raining in the streets we glide through, and this constitutes one more added pleasantness. Some people find it frightfully agreeable to see that it is raining and at the same time be permitted to sense that they themselves are not getting wet. The image produced by a gray, wet street has something consoling and dreamy about it, and so you stand now upon the rear platform of the creaking car that is rumbling its way forward, and you gaze straight ahead. Gazing straight ahead is something done by almost all the people who sit or stand in the electric. — Robert Walser

Getting something done is like digging a well. You can dig a well seventy feet deep, but if you don't hit water it's just an abandoned well. — Mencius

Oh, is my baby's little pussy finally getting wet?" He put his hand on her knee.
She tried to cross her legs. "Yes, and it's a lot. It feels very messy."
He could smell her now. Bending over and presenting her ass had done something for her. So had dirty talk. Yeah, he could talk dirty. "Messy is good. I want that pussy dirty and ripe when I start to eat it. — Lexi Blake

Acting like an adult and being professional on set and getting my work done has just been a lifestyle for me. It's not something I have to try hard to do, necessarily. — Colin Ford

I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument - they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. His work could not be done by anyone else, any more than another person could ever take the place of the father in his child's affections. This — Viktor E. Frankl

Though not everything is so easy in doing, ponder before you say something is far difficult to do! When you think of the difficulty in getting it done, think and think again; you may have spent the same time you should have used for the utmost preparations that could have made the difficulty you look at but cannot see the panacea on something else, or you are not finding the necessary time, wit, courage, tenacity and the will power to release your whole and true self to master the very act and art of making difficult things easier! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive. — Elon Musk

I brought soup just in case you changed your mind. Are the pains easing up at all?" He manfully kept the hopeful note out of his tone.
"All the activity must have set them off. They seem to be getting farther apart, and they're shorter in duration. From all the research I've done, that means false labor."
He felt like a man given a reprieve right before a death sentence, but he kept his features expressionless. He wanted her to count on him, and she couldn't do that if she knew he was petrified of delivering a baby.
"Will you try to eat something?" He walked farther into the room and set the tray on the end table. "It might help."
She flashed him a
smile that told him he didn't know what he was talking about, but she picked up the bowl of soup and spoon, sank down in the middle of the bed, tailor fashion, her back against the headboard, and regarded him steadily. — Christine Feehan

Vision is about more than just getting things done, accomplishing some task, achieving something; it is about discovering and expanding our view of others, affirming them, believing in them, and helping them discover and realize the potential within them-helping them find their own voice. — Stephen Covey

The military taught me the importance of getting something done in a timely manner and the importance of completing a mission on time. My lieutenant would say, 'If you don't, you die.' In many ways, life is the same. If you don't pay attention to a timeline, you lose out on the ability to accomplish the task at hand. — Don Young

I can speak for myself and say that a lot of times you just make mistakes! You're under pressure to get something done in a limited amount of time, and so you just dive in without really knowing what you're getting yourself into. — Christopher Tin

Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg. — H.L. Mencken

Did you ever think you had all the answers when you were in the thick of something, but then when you take a step back, you realize you were so busy getting things done that you never stopped to ask yourself if it's what you really want to do? — Jana Deleon

Marvin thought of his bowel movements as BMs, a phrase he'd heard an army doctor mutter once. His BMs were turning against him, turning violent in a way. He and Eleanor went through the Dolomites and across Austria and nipped into the northwest corner of Hungary and the stuff came crashing out of him, noisy and remarkably dark. But mainly it was the smell that disturbed him. He was afraid Eleanor would notice. He realized this was probably a normal part of every early marriage, smelling the other's smell, getting it over and done with so you can move ahead with your lives, have children, buy a little house, remember everybody's birthday, take a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, get sick and die. But in this case the husband had to take extreme precautions because the odor was shameful, it was intense and deeply personal and seemed to say something awful about the bearer.
His smell was a secret he had to keep from his wife. — Don DeLillo

It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When
you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay
too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you
bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The
common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a
lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well
to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will
have enough to pay for something better. — John Ruskin

When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up onto the top of a hill, and you see something else. Then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process. — Roald Dahl

One of the first pieces of advice I was ever given, on my first job was, you should always buy something to treat yourself to say well done for getting the job! However I've not followed on that through yet ... I've always wanted a tattoo, something to mark my experience. — Sam Claflin

Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it's getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals. — Donald Trump

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind. — Walter Mosley

Because I've done so many different roles, I don't want to repeat myself. It's getting harder and harder to find something interesting. You never know - I might never make a film again. — Maggie Cheung

Every time I think I'm getting smarter I realize that I've just done something stupid. Dad says there are three kinds of people in the world: those who don't know, and don't know they don't know; those who don't know and do know they don't know; and those who know and know how much they still don't know.
Heavy stuff, I know. I think I've finally graduated from the don't-knows that don't know to the don't-knows
that do. — Karen Marie Moning

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Sometimes just getting out of the house and doing something you haven't done in a long time (or never done!) can open up the doors to musical inspiration. — Ken Hill

I've loved Kevin McDonald's movies for a while and it was an amazing experience because he really wanted to do something different. It was by far one of the hardest things I've ever done, to wake up every single day and know that you're going to be freezing cold and wet, every single day, 10 times a day, and there's no getting away from it. — Channing Tatum

I left Stone Sour in '97 because, by that time, we'd been together for about five years and I was kind of getting to the point where I wanted to do something different. I loved the music that we did and I loved the guys that I was with, but I was 24 and just felt like I needed to go and try something different so I didn't get stuck where I was, you know, just doing the same thing. And, coincidentally, that's when Slipknot came and asked me to join. I'd never done anything like Slipknot up until then, so I was like, "Okay, we'll try this and we'll see what happens." And it worked out. — Corey Taylor

Page 142: "When a spouse says to the alcoholic, "you need to go to AA," that is obviously not true. The addict feels no need to do that at all, and isn't. But when she says, "I am moving out and will be open to getting back together when you are getting treatment for your addiction," then all of a sudden the addict feels "I need to get some help or I am going to lose my marriage." The need has been transferred. It is the same with any kind of problematic behavior of a person who is not taking feedback and ownership. The need and drive to do something about it must be transferred to that person, and that is done through having consequences that finally make him feel the pain instead of others. When he feels the pain, he will feel the need to change ... A plan that has hope is one that limits your exposure to the foolish person's issues and forces him to feel the consequences of his performance so that he might have hope of waking up and changing. — Henry Cloud

Even when writing your own poems, you need to talk to people; you need to magpie around, getting words and things. I'm very against the celebrity culture that wants to say: 'this is a genius, this is one person who has done something brilliant.' There are always a hundred people in the background who have helped to make it. — Alice Oswald

I want gaming to be something that everybody does, because they understand that games can be a real solution to problems and a real source of happiness. I want games to be something everybody learns how to design and develop, because they understand that games are a real platform for change and getting things done. And I want families, schools, companies, industries, cities, countries, and the whole world to come together to play them, because we're finally making games that tackle real dilemmas and improve real lives. — Jane McGonigal

I would encourage people to realize that you don't have to panic if you're not part of a mainstream, or if you find yourself outside the flow. If it doesn't suit you, don't go along with it. Just sit it out and get your stuff done. Don't just sit moaning or getting drunk - I spent some years doing that. But if you can just come up with something of your own, however minor it is, that's going to be easier to live with when you're at the end of your life. — Robert Wyatt

Nope.' He sat back. 'Just been there, done that. Done that getting hauled to the police station thing because of it, too.I appreciate your quest and everything, but I have to draw the line somewhere.'
'Wait,' I said, holding up my hand. 'My quest?'
He turned to look at me. We were at a red light, no other cars were anywhere in sight. 'Yeah,' he said. 'You know, like in Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars. You're searching for something you lost or need. It's a quest.'
I just looked at him.
'Maybe it's a guy thing,' he said. 'Fine, don't call it a quest. Call it chicken salad, I don't care. My point is, I'm in, but within reason. That's all I'm saying. — Sarah Dessen

There are two types of spirits. One makes the transition to the spirit realm and goes on to whatever comes next. They can still come back to connect with people who are alive, but it's like dropping by for a visit, and then they go back to whatever it is they were happily doing in the next life. On the other hand, earthbound spirits - ghosts - are folks who pass but still have unfinished business. They feel like they're going to be judged for something they did wrong; or they don't know they are dead; or they are angry about being dead and not getting to finish something. They have been cheated out of life. They stay on a plane that's closer to the plane of earth, and that's why they're always at the corners of our vision and the edges of our dreams. Once they complete the process and resign themselves to the fact that their time on earth is finished and they've done what they can do, they can move to the next level. — Jodi Picoult

Leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done. — Vance Packard

The thing that probably trips me up the most are people getting tattoos of stuff that I've designed in my books. That always spins me out in a weird way. It seems like such a permanent commitment to something I've done. I don't know that I could do that for anyone else. — Jonathan Hickman

If I'm happy with the song and it's a hit song or not, for the rest of my life, I can hang my hat on knowing I did the best I could, and I'll enjoy getting out there and doing it. That's all that really matters for me. The icing on the cake is people actually enjoy it and sing it back to you. That's when you know that you've done something great. — Jake Owen

I love getting into a studio with a bunch of friends. When the day's done, we've made something. We recognize that we're from different walks of the music industry, and there's no reason we shouldn't be collaborating. That's what I'm trying to create with thenewno2 - a sense of community. — Dhani Harrison

Richard stood, running his fingers through his thick hair, getting it out of his face, and showing his chest off to good advantage. For the first time, I wondered if he'd done it on purpose. I searched his face for that edge of teasing that Jean-Claude had, that knowledge that even that simple movement touched me. There was nothing. Richard's face was guileless, handsome, empty of ulterior motives. I exchanged glances with Jean-Claude. He shrugged. "If you do not understand him, do not look to me. I am not in love with him." Richard looked puzzled. "Did I miss something? — Laurell K. Hamilton

"Okay, what'd I do?" he asked.
"Nothing. I'm just tired."
"Uh-uh. I suspected I was getting the cold shoulder earlier, but with everything going on, I wasn't sure. Now I'm sure. You're giving me the look."
"What look?"
"The Maya's-pissed-with-Corey look. Fifty percent disappointment, thirty percent disapproval, twenty percent exasperation. I've done something you're not happy about."
I hesitated, then blurted, "Rafe told me what you said about Daniel."
He frowned. "You're going to need to be a little more specific."
"In Salmon Creek, when Rafe and I started getting together. You told him to back off because Daniel ... " I glanced at the open door and lowered my voice. "Because Daniel likes me." — Kelley Armstrong

I was getting away with something in my own way. But then I get here and saw you, brain-dead and with tubes coming out of every part of your body. And I realized I wasn't getting away with anything. Just like you didn't get away with anything. You were just born, fucked around for a while, got hit by a car and died, and that's your whole life story right there. You don't win by getting through all you life not having done anything. — John Scalzi

I'm smart enough to know when I've done something wrong, but I don't understand this. Guys are beating their wives, getting DUIs and doing drugs, and I get national attention for a Sharpie? People are personally attacking me, calling me a classless asshole because I did something creative during a game. Why? — Terrell Owens

Anyone who takes responsibility for getting something done is welcome to ask for the authority to do it. — Seth

Her eyes weren't blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all the way through to the back of him and beyond, out into the cold space of the future in which they would both soon be dead, out into the nothingness that Lalitha and his mother and his father had already passed into, and yet she was looking straight into his eyes, and he could feel her getting warmer by the minute. And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind. — Jonathan Franzen

As a director and filmmaker, I love creating my own opportunity, and getting to share the love, in that way, by creating other opportunities for people that I admire, so that they can do something in a way they haven't done it before. — Mark Webber

The craziest thing I've done getting over love is skydiving. I had a really upsetting breakup. When I broke up with my boyfriend I needed to like do something different and so I actually went skydiving to turn over a new page. — Shay Mitchell

There is usually an inverse relationship between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done. — David Allen