Tasks And Activities Quotes & Sayings

When cities were first founded, an old Egyptian scribe tells us, the mission of the founder was to 'put gods in their shrines.' The task of the coming city is not essentially different: its mission is to put the highest concerns of man at the center of all his activities. — Lewis Mumford

I gazed up at him as the laughter filled his face, and just loved him. The day had sucked, but Jean-Claude made it suck a lot less, and that was what love was supposed to do. It was supposed to make things better, not worse — Laurell K. Hamilton

Priorities versus Posteriorities Setting priorities requires setting posteriorities as well. A priority is something that you do more of and sooner, whereas a posteriority is something you do less of or later. You are probably already overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. Because of this, for you to embark on a new task, you must discontinue an old task. Getting into something new requires getting out of another activity. Before you commit to a new undertaking, ask yourself, "What am I going to stop doing so that I have enough time to work on this new task?" Go through your life regularly and practice "creative abandonment": Consciously determine the activities that you are going to discontinue so that you have more time to spend on those tasks that can really make a difference to your future. — Brian Tracy

Life in death and death in life. Could — Sergei Lukyanenko

What I saw as the negative effect on women's minds of such mundane "tracking" activities as calorie counting, I had sensed that the reason so many tasks women are expected to do in society involve this kind of thinking (e.g. scanning, list making, judging themselves critically, "measuring up") had something to do with the suppressive effect this kind of thinking has on other, bolder kinds of intellectual or emotional leaps. — Naomi Wolf

Mindful living is an art. You do not have to be a monk or living in a monastery to practice mindfulness. You can practice it anytime, while driving your car or doing housework. Driving in mindfulness will make the time in your car joyful, and it will also help you avoid accidents. You can use the red traffic light as a signal of mindfulness, reminding you to stop and enjoy your breathing. Similarly, when you do the dishes after dinner you can practice mindful breathing, so the time dish washing is pleasant and meaningful. You do not feel you have to rush. If you hurry, you waste the time of dish washing. The time you spend washing dishes and doing all your other everyday tasks is precious. It is a time for being alive. When you practice mindful living, peace will bloom during your daily activities. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I've never understood why some people hesitate before diving into unfamiliar tasks or activities. I couldn't imagine wanting more instructions about anything. — Martha Beck

People who underestimate their capabilities also bear costs, although, as already noted, these are more likely to take self-limiting rather than aversive forms. By failing to cultivate personal potentialities and constricting their activities, such persons cut themselves off from many rewarding experiences. Should they attempt tasks having evaluative significance, they create internal obstacles to effective performance by approaching them with unnerving self-doubts — Albert Bandura

In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth. — Ishmael Reed

I often have a few scents depending on if I'm playing a character. The character may be wearing a scent that perhaps I wouldn't wear. We've all got different moods and ways we want to express ourselves; scent is a very powerful way to let people in to your secret life. — Cate Blanchett

When you streamline your schedule by making deliberate decisions about tasks and activities that are crucially important you and identify your most important priorities, you give yourself permission to make choices that excite and interest you. You also grant yourself permission to exercise your right to say, No, thank you. — Julie Connor

Tasks are the real-world activities people think of when planning, conducting, or recalling their day. That can mean things like brushing their teeth, preparing breakfast, reading a newspaper, taking a child to school, responding to e-mail messages, making a sales call, attending a lecture or a business meeting, having lunch with a colleague from work, helping a child with homework, coaching a soccer team, and watching a TV program. Some tasks are mundane, some complex. — Mike Long

The task confronting contemporary man is to live with the hidden ground of his activities as familiarly as our literate predecessors lived with the figure minus ground. — Marshall McLuhan

As the activities of the wise man exist only in the eyes of others and not in his own, although he may be accomplishing immense tasks, he really does nothing. — Ramana Maharshi

We all need to take a proper break once in a while. — Samantha Sotto

I've come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you're playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God's love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I've come to think that happiness isn't really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year. — David Brooks

Jesus was returning to a place that was religiously very busy, just like most churches are: tasks, committees, noise, people coming and going, lots of transactions. But the busyness contained no spirituality. Nobody was actually praying. There are many things we do that can appear to be signs of real belief but can grow without real heart change. Evidently we can be very busy in church activities without real heart change and without real compassionate involvement with others. — Timothy Keller

Even the mundane task of washing dishes by hand is an example of the small tasks and personal activities that once filled people's daily lives with a sense of achievement. — B.F. Skinner

We are for ever trying to make our weakness look like strength, our sentiment like love, our cowardice like courage, and so on. — Swami Vivekananda

Most of our days are filled with routine duties required for life to continue with any sort of sanity. But if we take the time look closely, we might discover that God is using these normal activities to prepare us for future tasks, each duty pointing to His blessing in our lives. — Priscilla Shirer

I don't mind playing bad guys, but I love having the opportunity to play all different types of characters. — J. R. Bourne

Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader. — William Zinsser

Focusing on and sustaining life activities...jobs, budgets housekeeping etc. takes from me. It is an exhausting struggle; a desperate attempt to tread water while drowning.
Life drains my well. Special interests fill it back up. I need that time, I need that filling, that relaxing, that decompressing, in order to accomplish other tasks in my life. — Jeannie Davide-Rivera

He pressed himself into me and kissed my neck, and it was as if everything strong and solid inside me, heart and bones and muscle and gut, softened and melted from the heat of him. — Jennifer Donnelly

Indeed, living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always involves an inner experience of oneness. We realize that we are in the center, and that from there all that is and all that takes place can be seen and understood as part of the mystery of God's life with us. Our conflicts and pains, our tasks and promises, our families and friends, our activities and projects, our hopes and aspirations, no longer appear to us as a fatiguing variety of things which we can barely keep together, but rather as affirmations and revelations of the new life of the Spirit in us. "All these other things," which so occupied and preoccupied us, now come as gifts or challenges that strengthen and deepen the new life which we have discovered. This does not mean that the spiritual life makes things easier or takes our struggles and pains away. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger - these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Those of us who consider ourselves to be somehow involved in the birthing of a new age, should discover Gaia as well. The idea of Gaia may facilitate the task of converting destructive human activities to constructive and cooperative behavior. It is an idea which deeply startles us, and in the process, may help us as a species to make the necessary jump to planetary awareness. — James Lovelock

Much more plausible is the computer-based explanation that dreams are a spillover from the unconscious processing of the day's experience, from the brain's decision on how much of the daily events temporarily stored in a kind of buffer to emplace in long-term memory... The American psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University has provided
anecdotal but reasonably persuasive evidence that people who are engaged in intellectual activities during the day, especially unfamiliar intellectual activities, require more sleep at night, while, by and large, those engaged in mainly repetitive and intellectually unchallenging tasks are able to do with much less sleep. — Carl Sagan

You can get control of your tasks and activities only to the degree that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the few activities that can really make a difference in your life. — Brian Tracy

Stress, burnout and strain on the human heart are all increasingly taking their toll for millions of hardworking people. However, even someone who is working in a job that simply 'pays the bills' can turn mundane and stressful tasks into pleasant activities with a slight adjustment in attitude and by adopting a daily mindful practice. — Christopher Dines

don't ask yourself, "What tasks need to be done?" Ask yourself, "What outcomes need to be accomplished?" Then determine the activities that will get you there. — Matt Perman

Find out your most limiting tasks and deal with them as early as possible. Use a diary, and jot little points of reminder about specific tasks for reference later. — Israelmore Ayivor