Quotes & Sayings About Productivity In Life

I'm not building a castle or a monument; I'm building a soul and a family. I'll tell stories all my life, writing on napkins and on the backs of receipts, or in books if they let me, but this is the promise I make to my God: I will never again be so careless, so cavalier with the body and soul you've given me. They are the only things in all the world that have been entrusted entirely to me, and I stewarded them poorly, worshiping for a time at the altars of productivity, capability, busyness, distraction. This body and soul will become again what God intended them to be: living sacrifices, offered only to him. I will spend my life on meaning, on connection, on love, on freedom. I will not waste one more day trapped in comparison, competition, proving, and earning. That's the currency of a culture that has nothing to offer me. It — Shauna Niequist

Only you can succeed in converting your values into product can you win the battle against time — Sunday Adelaja

In Deuteronomy 11, God offers Israel a choice; either a life of productivity and enjoyment made possible by obedience to Him, or a life of difficulty and opposition made necessary by disobedience. The happiness Israel desires can only be theirs by being properly related to Him. — Max Anders

To be fruitful and productive is to invest in time — Sunday Adelaja

When we do harm to one thing we are essentially harming ourselves. For example when we use poisonous toxins and pesticides to grow our food, we pollute the soil, kill the life of the surrounding ecosystems, decrease the quality of the food supply, which then decreases our health and the level of energy we operate on. When we do this every day on a global scale for several decades we end up with soil infertility, habitat loss, environmental pollution, low quality food, poor health, malnutrition, and a lack of productivity, which is so apparent in today's society. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression. The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment. The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment. — Herbert Hoover

We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end. — Lewis Mumford

No greater tragedy exists in modern civilization than the aged, worn-out worker who after a life of ceaseless effort and useful productivity must look forward for his declining years to a poorhouse. A modern social consciousness demands a more humane and efficient arrangement. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

In other words, ongoing peace of mind comes through faith in Christ expressed in day-to-day life. This is the kind of peace that can endure even when everything is going haywire and we are simply unable to keep up with things. Why? Because it is not based on us. Just as we do good works from justification rather than for justification, we are also to do good works from peace rather than for peace. With gospel-centered productivity, peace comes first, not second. — Matt Perman

Meditation is the practice of silent contemplation. The practice of mediation eradicates deeply rooted negative thoughts to allow positive ones to gradually make your mind their permanent abode. Meditation calms you down. This allows you moments of non-interrupted contemplation of what's going on inside your body as well as your surroundings. It illuminates the purpose you have in life and increases your memory, focus, and productivity. — Matthew Barton

Goals are set in life to enable concentrated and directed effort to be employed toward a desired end. Without goals, it will be easy to derail, and it will also be hard to track progress. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

There is nothing new about prophecies to the effect that the end of the world is near if we do not repent. What is new is that such a prophecy is now true, for two obvious reasons. First, nuclear weapons give us the means to wipe ourselves out quickly: no humans possessed this means before. Second, we already appropriate about forty per cent of the Earth's net productivity (that is, the net energy captured from sunlight). With the world's human population now doubling every forty-one years, we will soon have reached the biological limit to growth, at which point we will have to start fighting each other in deadly earnest for a slice of the world's fixed pie of resources. In addition, given the present rate at which we are exterminating species, most of the world's species will become extinct or endangered within the next century, but we depend on many species for our own life support. — Jared Diamond

Leaving traces of ourselves, as in creative productivity, could then be seen as part of the definition of consciousness for us as well. We know that in order to progress we must stretch for something just out of reach
if only for a life that will be more compassionate and decent than the cruelty, paranoia, greed, narrow corporatism, or narcissism we mostly indulge in and find such ample justification for. And so we dream. — Breyten Breytenbach

Do you want to flourish in the garden of life? Life's gardeners pluck the weeds and care only for the productive plants. — Bryant McGill

I do not equate productivity to happiness. For most people, happiness in life is a massive amount of achievement plus a massive amount of appreciation. And you need both of those things. — Timothy Ferriss

There has to be something other than keeping busy that gives human life value, because our society so often functions as if 'productivity' and/or 'usefulness' are the measures of human value, and - particularly for artists - this is deeply problematic. We shouldn't given in. — Tasha Golden

Time is the ultimate democracy. Rich and poor, young and old, male and female: all have 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. — Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Resist the short term temptation of procrastination; the immediate pleasure and relief that it brings does not fair in comparison to the long lasting damage it does to your dreams and goals. — Noel DeJesus

I'll be living quietly in a house somewhere in the suburbs, enjoying a peaceful existence not writing the book I'm not writing now and, so as to continue not doing so, I will come up with different excuses from the ones I use now to avoid actually confronting myself. Or else I'll be interned in a poorhouse, content with my utter failure, mingling with the riffraff who believed they were geniuses when in fact they were just beggars with dreams, mixing with the anonymous mass of people who had neither the strength to triumph nor the power to turn their defeats into victories. — Fernando Pessoa

Your goal in life should be to produce concrete product — Sunday Adelaja

On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur. — Evelyn Underhill

The potential of controlling and living a successful life according to your terms depends on how you think. Your perception is your world. You can create the life you want and in fact, you can even shape the way you want it. — Dee Dee Artner

Without an organized space life in general feels unorganized and overwhelming which results in a complete lack of productivity. — Jessie Fuller

Our first-party devices will light up digital work and life. Surface Pro 3 is a great example
it is the world's best productivity tablet. In addition, we will build first-party hardware to stimulate more demand for the entire Windows ecosystem. That means at times we'll develop new categories like we did with Surface. It also means we will responsibly make the market for Windows Phone, which is our goal with the Nokia devices and services acquisition. — Satya Nadella

Selling your life to sit in a box and work for a machine. An uncaring machine that demands productivity that doesn't understand you and doesn't want to understand you ... There's no natural behaviour. Everyone is wearing clothes they don't want to wear. Everybody is showing up and doing something they don't want to do. They have no connection to it. That's the problem with our society ... — Joe Rogan

Effectiveness in life is a measure of how many products you are able to produce in life — Sunday Adelaja

Be fearless in releasing the productivity of your time — Sunday Adelaja

What makes the IoT a disruptive technology in the way we organize economic life is that it helps humanity reintegrate itself into the complex choreography of the biosphere, and by doing so, dramatically increases productivity without compromising the ecological relationships that govern the planet. — Jeremy Rifkin

It struck me, in fact, that all of my work on habits and happiness was meant to help us construct, as much as possible, just that: everyday life in Utopia. Everyday life with deep, loving relationships and productive, satisfying work; everyday life with energy, health, and productivity; everyday life with fun, enthusiasm, and engagement, with as little regret, guilt, or anger as possible. — Gretchen Rubin

One of the most valuable gifts that a person can give (or receive) is a productive mentality. It is with a productive mentality that people change their lives for the better, in ways profound. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

No society has succeeded in abolishing the distinction between ruler and ruled ... to be a ruler gives one special status and, usually, special privileges. During the Communist era, important officials in the Soviet Union had access to special shops selling delicacies unavailable to ordinary citizens; before China allowed capitalist enterprises in its economy, travelling by car was a luxury limited to tourists and those high in the party hierarchy Throughout the 'communist' nations, the abolition of the old ruling class was followed by the rise of a new class of party bosses and well-placed bureaucrats, whose behaviour and life-style came more and more to resemble that of their much-denounced predecessors. In the end, nobody believed in the system any more. That, couple with its inability to match the productivity of the less bureaucratically controlled, more egoistically driven capitalist economies, led to its downfall. — Peter Singer

The human art form is in uniting fruitful activity with a contemplative stance, not one or the other, but always both at the same time. — Richard Rohr

When you invest in life, you are being fruitful and productive — Sunday Adelaja

But there is a critical point about differences between individuals that exerts arguably more influence on worker productivity than any other. The factor is locus of control, a fancy name for how people view their autonomy and agency in the world. People with an internal locus of control believe that they are responsible for (or at least can influence) their own fates and life outcomes. They may or may not feel they are leaders, but they feel that they are essentially in charge of their lives. Those with an external locus of control see themselves as relatively powerless pawns in some game played by others; they believe that other people, environmental forces, the weather, malevolent gods, the alignment of celestial bodies
basically any and all external events
exert the most influence on their lives. — Daniel J. Levitin

Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. You can create little islands of time away from your novel that will help preserve your balance. Exhaustion will affect both your writing's quality and your productivity. — Jeff VanderMeer

To survive in modern times, a company must have an organizational structure that accepts change as its basic premise, lets tribal customs thrive, and fosters a power that is derived from respect, not rules. In other words, the successful companies will be the ones that put quality of life first. Do this and the rest - quality of product, productivity of workers, profits for all - will follow. — Ricardo Semler

Playing Super Mario Bros. 2 again, in the two-bedroom apartment I share with my wife, is to re-learn the productivity of cussing. Playing any game, for that matter, bends my larynx into the saltiest shapes imaginable. With time comes an understanding that the game on your screen is nothing compared to life's true challenges. Still, with each fall down a pit or graze of a fireball-spitting plant, my mild-mannered speech pattern gives way to filth. Super Mario Bros. 2 is not even known as a difficult game. But to a player of limited and rusty skills, i.e., your author, it pushes back. — Jon Irwin

That drinking thing, the night before an early morning start, I actually think it helps the productivity in some ways (as long as it's not spirits) it gives you that I don't give a fuck attitude, more relaxed, I'm getting away with it after all, I had a life last night, and now I may be hungover, but I had that secret world that you didn't have, and that you tried to take away from me, want to take away from me. But I still got that beer buzz. And I'll do it again, tomorrow night too. I'll never surrender. And when I'm working, I'll be thinking about it. Those moments of mine, truly mine, that you can never have or take away from me. — Robert Black

We must continually abide in the vine, so that we can keep bearing lasting fruits — Lailah Gifty Akita

Leaders should get out of their comfort zone but stay in their strength zone. When their work lies within their natural gifting and strengths, leaders experience the greatest return in productivity and contentment. Life is too short to live in the comfort zone, where growing and accomplishing and achieving your potential takes a back seat. I suggest you refocus if the comfort zone is your leadership priority. — John C. Maxwell

The biggest single obstacle to success, happiness, performance, and productivity in any area of your life is contained in fears of all kinds. Fear is and always has been the greatest enemy of mankind. More personalities are undermined and destroyed by fear than by any other factor. More relationships are hurt by fear than anything else, however it is manifested. More psychosomatic illnesses are caused by fears than by any other single factor. The — Brian Tracy

The point of simplicity is not efficiency, increased productivity or even living a healthier, more relaxed life. The point is making space for treasuring God's own self. — Jan Johnson

The downside of attending to the emotional life of groups is that it can swamp the ability to get anything done; a group can become more concerned with satisfying its members than with achieving its goals. Bion identified several ways that groups can slide into pure emotion - they can become "groups for pairing off," in which members are mainly interested in forming romantic couples or discussing those who form them; they can become dedicated to venerating something, continually praising the object of their affection (fan groups often have this characteristic, be they Harry Potter readers or followers of the Arsenal soccer team), or they can focus too much on real or perceived external threats. Bion trenchantly observed that because external enemies are such spurs to group solidarity, some groups will anoint paranoid leaders because such people are expert at identifying external threats, thus generating pleasurable group solidarity even when the threats aren't real. — Clay Shirky

Like the railroads that bankrupted a previous generation of visionary entrepreneurs and built the foundations of an industrial nation, fiber-optic webs, storewidth breakthroughs, data centers, and wireless systems installed over the last five years will enable and endow the next generation of entrepreneurial wealth. As Mead states, "the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was to get a company going during the bubble". Now, Mead says, "there's space available; you can get fab runs; you can get vendors to answer the phone. You can make deals with people; you can sit down and they don't spend their whole time telling you how they're a hundred times smarter than you. It's absolutely amazing. You can actually get work done now, which means what's happening now is that the entrepreneurs, the technologists, are building the next generation technology that isn't visible yet but upon which will be built the biggest expansion of productivity the world has ever seen. — George Gilder

Watching a tree grow will likely drive you crazy. It's a boring process if you stand there, impatiently tapping your foot, waiting for it to do something. But if you step away and come back later, you'll be surprised to see something beautiful emerge. The fact is the plant is doing something: it's growing. Just not as quickly as you might like. Our culture has conditioned us to expect instant results and overnight success; this impatience runs so rampant that we dress it up in terms like "efficiency" and "productivity." But really what's happening is we are conditioning ourselves to get what we want now, all the time. This mindset robs us of the lessons that waiting can teach us, causing us to miss out on the slow but important stuff of life. — Jeff Goins

Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one's life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being. — Walter Brueggemann

Each of these imperatives has a tendency to degenerate into an excuse for greed and materialism in the absence of the other. Without the call to generosity, the call to productivity makes people feel entitled to live materialistic lives - as long as they accumulate their wealth by working productively. But without the call to productivity, the call to generosity makes people feel entitled to live materialistic lives - as long as they pay off God by tithing their 10 percent. The only way to root out materialism is to reorient people's attitudes about their entire economic lives. If you only lead people to do good work (productivity), they'll use their wealth selfishly. If you only lead them to get their use of wealth right (generosity), they won't orient their lives to good work. The whole life of a person has to turn away from selfishness and serve God and neighbor. As someone once said, the only effective place to intervene in a vicious circle is everywhere at once. — Greg Forster

Productivity is not what will bring purpose to your life, but what will enable you to excel in living out your existing purpose. — Tim Challies

More often than not, focusing on stress, pain and chaos in our lives creates even more stress, pain and chaos for us. Here's what I've experienced, and my guess is that it's happened to you as well: Whenever I am focused on how difficult my life is, I begin to feel overwhelmed, stressed, depressed, and worried. These emotions, in turn, influence my productivity, actions and choices. They may even change my sleeping patterns and compromise my immune system. Sooner or later they begin to interfere with my relationships with family and friends. They even hinder the way I worship or approach God. As these emotions continue to influence how I live, cope, function, and relate to those around me, they can even impact my finances and long-term security. — Gaylyn Williams

For people to be happy in life, two factors are crucial: One is good interpersonal relationships and the second is a feeling of productivity. That feeling feeds motivation. — Peter A. Spevak

Your life as an effective person must always have productivity surrounding all your efforts, there must be a sustained forward and upward trajectory in every area of your life. This is where the Shona Shereketa meets the Japanese Kaizen - you are moving and shaking past mediocrity on the basis of small but continuous improvements that will ultimately result in positive quality changes to your life. — Archibald Marwizi

Welcome to the real-life experience of "knowledge work," and a profound operational principle: you have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you're afraid you might. As Peter Drucker wrote: "In knowledge work . . . the task is not given; it has to be determined. 'What are the expected results from this work?' is . . . the key question in making knowledge workers productive. And it is a question that demands risky decisions. There is usually no right answer; there are choices instead. And results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved."* — David Allen

All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality that I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found - in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends, and real communities are built - then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material "sufficiency" which our global "experts" are so insistent we be concerned about. — John Taylor Gatto

Fifth letter : To lead your best life, do your best work

There is no insignificant work in the world. All labor is a chance to express personal talents, to create our art and to realize the genius we are built to be. We must work like picasso painted : with devotion, passion, energy and excellence. In this way, our productivity will not only become a source of inspiration to others, but it will have an impact - making a difference in the lives around us. One of the greatest secrets to a life beautifully lived is to do work that matters. And to ascend to such a state of mastery in it that people can't take ther eyes off you. — Robin S. Sharma

People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity; people who cannot marshal some control over their emotional life fight inner battles that sabotage their ability for focused work and clear thought. — Daniel Goleman