Work Priorities Quotes & Sayings

Putting together a sustainable budget requires that we all work together, that we focus our scarce resources on key priorities, and that we strengthen our capacity to deliver the best product we can for the American people. And that takes money. — Roy Blunt

I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the funny short subjects, the half-finished romantic comedy, the boxes of slice-of-life photographs that spoke volumes about the human condition. I wondered how you stop caring about what you've ached over, sweated over. (Thwonk) — Joan Bauer

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work. — H. L. Hunt

Earlier, my priority was only work. I worked like a dog before I got married. After marriage, once you have a baby, time management is difficult. Your responsibilities change, your priorities change. And you have to concentrate on them if you have to work out your life. Your career is just a part of your life. For me, my family is my life. — Kajol

My first priority is my family. I am human. But my whole family knows what my priority is. Family is always first. But my work is under nothing else, except God. — Lil' Wayne

Wake up early. Drink some juice, and eat well. Work hard. Be ambitious. Keep your priorities straight, your mind right, and your head up. Do well, live well, love well, and dress really well. Do what you love, love what you do. It is time to start living. — Anonymous

You shouldn't marry unless the both of you are on the same page on a lot of things. Life is going to deal you blows, and you have to be together. Your values and priorities have to be on the same page; otherwise, it won't work. — Nicole Ari Parker

Life is about your soul, not about your body and not about your mind. Most people work hard to keep the body happy. Then they seek to stimulate their mind. Then ... if there is time ... they look after their soul. Yet the most beneficial priority has it just the other way around ... When was the last time you paid attention to your soul? — Neale Donald Walsch

I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done. — Masanobu Fukuoka

My real priorities were my family - my kids and Bruce - and my work with the E Street Band. — Patti Scialfa

[ ... ] there exists around the written world opened by the work a multitude of other possible worlds, which we can complete by means of our images and our words. Denying oneself this work of completion in the name of some hypothetical fidelity to the work is bound to fail: we can indeed reject filling these gaps in a conscious way, but we cannot prevent our unconscious from finishing the work, according to its priorities and those of the era in which it was written. — Pierre Bayard

When I was young, I thought I was a god. Now, I just basically work on staying humble. My priorities changed. Just to be able to try to change them - that was frightening to me. — Mike Tyson

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

Being a musician, being a person who's playing tours and making records is a part-time thing for me at age. I did it, I lived it and I breathed it every day of my life for 30-odd years and now I am slowing down a little bit. But it does not mean that I am any less intense and dedicated to the work that I am doing now. I have other priorities in life as well. — David Gilmour

Energy efficiency should be on the priority list for all home improvement work these days. Canny builders will be able to provide homeowners with energy efficient measures which help them to save money and the planet. — Sarah Beeny

When you're supposed to be working, work, and when you're supposed to be playing, play. It's a weird tightrope you're walking, but it's only when you get your priorities mixed up that things fall apart. — Gary Keller

To live a fulfilling life, we must combine passion with compassion and strength without strife; we must get out of our comfort zone and into our strength zone; and we must work every day with discipline to ensure that our daily agenda reflects our values, our priorities, and the legacy we wish to leave for others. — Gabrielle

If you don't have time, the truth is, you don't have priorities. Think harder; don't work harder. — Tim Ferriss

Taking the inventory of your current work at all levels will automatically produce greater focus, alignment, and sense of priorities. — David Allen

Your success in life and work will be determined by the kinds of habits that you develop over time. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination, and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again, until it locks into your subsconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your behaviour. — Brian Tracy

You can have anything you want, but not everything. If it was really important to spend an afternoon at my daughter's school, I had to think, how was I going to organize my life to do that? How could I become more efficient? I always tried to put my priorities on the table, personal and professional, and work around them. — Laura Lang

Most people are balancing 10 or 20 priorities. I have two. My family and my work. — David Boies

I get up late, have an espresso, and immediately start work. I try to get roughly caught up on email before I leave the house, then if I need to write anything or review a complex deal, I do that, and then I head to the office and work on my top few priorities for the day. I try to schedule my meetings in the afternoon. — Sam Altman

You're finally there, Robbie. On stage in front of huge audiences. All of your hard work has paid off. It's your time.
He didn't want any of that. As he looked at Zoey, the priorities he'd always set for himself fell away, leaving just one. One thing that mattered to him.
Her. — Mari Carr

I love working and I feel satisfied when I know I have literally given all the energy that I have. That being said, work is not my No. 1 priority. I don't think it can come at the expense of your family, your friends and your 'significant other' if you have one. — Anne Hathaway

Just because you're part of 'Twilight' does not mean you're a superstar. It means that you're given the opportunity to maybe become one later if you work hard. Once fandom goes away, which it will very soon, it's all about having your priorities straight and working hard. — Nikki Reed

The problem in today's economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman's intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee. — John Medina

You have to understand that motherhood has to be your priority. It's important work. — Salma Hayek

The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don't want to earn a good return on their investment, but it's not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They're also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They've learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they've created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants. — Bo Burlingham

Successful people work hard on the right things b/c working hard on the wrong things only makes one worn out while failing. — Orrin Woodward

There is always more we can do in ministry, but God is not asking 'Can you do more?'. He is asking 'Do you love me?' Some of those extras are not always as vital as we think them to be. — Christopher Ash

My priorities have always been God first, family second, career third. I have found that when I put my life in this order, everything seems to work out. God was my first priority early in my career when I was struggling to make ends meet. Through the failures and success I have experienced since then, my faith has remained unchecked. — Mary Kay Ash

Luckily because I had a family and children, my priorities changed. I mean, I'm very passionate about my work but I have other interests and other things that balance my life. — Penelope Ann Miller

I think there was a time when I considered myself a work addict, but that's no longer accurate. My life has changed so dramatically over the last number of years, especially having a family now. My priorities have shifted. — Edie Falco

Your new challenge is to redesign your time allocations.
Your strategic focus determines where your time resources will be mainly invested. Prioritise acting out your own script, make your own movie instead of spending too much time watching others at work through the TV. It is surprising the number of unsuccessful people who spend all their time resources on the social media platforms following the lives of the successful. Make the news, be the leader and let others follow you. Align you priorities and balance your activities. — Archibald Marwizi

It's funny how you never know how much you can handle until it gets worse. And just when you get used to that, it happens again. But somehow, even with this experience you find a way to make it work because that is how you cope. Not because you deserve it or because you need the experience to set priorities, but because it's the human thing and it is life. And through this experience we will grow, find out what the holiday means and learn to expect more of each other. Together we will use this struggle to make us stronger as a family and support each other when we break down. That is what a family does and how we cope. — Brooke Desserich

If you've got a deadline and you're an artist, you've just got to be on the case - nothing else can come in the way, or you won't make good work ... the people around you just have to understand. — Catherine Yass

Evangelism is not a calling reserved exclusively for the clergy. I believe one of the greatest priorities of the church today is to mobilize the laity to do the work of evangelism. — Billy Graham

What Canada has to do is to have a government connected to the priorities of the people of which it is elected to serve. Those priorities include ensuring medicare is sustainable, support for the military, and tax and justice systems that work. — Peter MacKay

The Italians have their priorities right: They're driven, they do their work, but they really enjoy the day-to-day and they don't put off the enjoyment of the everyday for some future goal. — Frances Mayes

And we need this. It could save us a year. Without it all we got is a regular manhunt. For a guy already four months AWOL, with a brand-new foreign passport. Instead of that we could have a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes lead us directly to him. Right here and now. Who wouldn't take that deal? The future means nothing if we don't live to see it." "So you broke the law, but only because you thought you had a good reason. You and everyone else. There are lots of good reasons. Too many good reasons. Which is why we have a special structure, to decide between them, when they compete one against the other. That structure is called the National Security Council. We weigh things up and we judge priorities. You just blew a year's hard work, major. You should resign. Before the after-action report comes out. You'll get a better deal that way." "OK," Reacher said. "I will, if it turns out bad. — Lee Child

My intention for my life is to stay centered, and from that intention come my priorities: my son, my family, my job, my self. That then informs what kind of work I can take on. It's a balancing act, but a fun one. — Jewel

What to go out with me tonight after work, Vaughan?"
... "You asking me out on a date, Lydia?"
"Yes," I said. "I am."
"Babe, I'd love to." His hand rose to the back of my neck, stroking, drawing me closer. Hot damn, did he have the moves. The man turned my mind to mush.
"Something you need to know," he said. "Before tonight."
"What's that?"
"I put out on the first date," he told me with a perfectly straight face. "That okay with you?"
"Oh, I'm counting on it" ... "I mean ... it would have been so awkward if you expected me to respect you for your mind or something. Yikes, how embarrassing. Between you and me, I'm really only interested in getting into your pants."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"I'm sure you're a nice guy and all, but, priorities, you know?"
"I know." The man's smile would have made a nun think twice. I never stood a chance. — Kylie Scott

Don't yield to Satan's lie that you don't have time to study the scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it! — Richard G. Scott

The single most important change you can make in your working habits is to switch to creative work first, reactive work second. This means blocking off a large chunk of time every day for creative work on your own priorities, with the phone and e-mail off. — Jocelyn K. Glei

Barth observes that the seventh day does not come at the end of a week of toil and labor for human beings as though its primary purpose is to offer a measure of respite after days of toil. Rather, since "God's seventh day was man's first,"54 the seventh day sets life's priority for human beings in the most tangible way. Better yet - and much closer to the point - the seventh day brings to view God's priorities. Seeing that human time "begins with a day of rest and not a day of work,"55 the spiritual pursuit, living life in a relationship with the Creator that is mutually meaningful, stands out as the primary meaning in life. — Sigve K. Tonstad

I went to Africa to work. Finding myself and falling in love were not items on the agenda. Those were the stuff of daydreams, borne of long, icy Canadian winters. At age 30, I felt I already knew my priorities, talents and limitations. The year in Africa forced me to question all of these assumptions. — Jacqueline L. Scott

Never forget, your family should always have priority over your work. — Mary Kay Ash

As successful companies mature, employees gradually come to assume that the priorities they have learned to accept, and the ways of doing things and methods of making decisions that they have employed so successfully, are the right way to work. Once members of the organization begin to adopt ways of working and criteria for making decisions by assumption, rather than by conscious decision, then those processes and values come to constitute the organization's culture. 7 As companies grow from a few employees to hundreds and thousands, the challenge of getting all employees to agree on what needs to be done and how it should be done so that the right jobs are done repeatedly and consistently can be daunting for even the best managers. Culture is a powerful management tool in these situations. Culture enables employees to act autonomously and causes them to act consistently. Hence, the location of the — Clayton M Christensen

Our first priority should be the people who work for the companies, then the customers, then the shareholders. Because if the staff are motivated then the customers will be happy, and the shareholders will then benefit through the company's success. — Richard Branson

In running back and forth among the things that might be important, we forget to spend enough time on what really is important. — Dan Ariely

The weird thing is that the more efficient, on task, on goal you are with your time, the more energy you have. Working with no traction, or for that matter simply wasting a day, does not relax you, it drains you.//
Strange as it may seem, when you work a daily plan in pursuit of your written goals that flow from your mission statement born of your vision for living your dreams, you are energized after a tough long day. — Dave Ramsey

The simple choice to pray usually happens to the exclusion of something else in our lives. Often that something else is frivolous, but at times prayer must come at the expense of important things, such as our own work, our sleep or our time with loved ones. — Jason Mandryk

My priority is always the family and Victoria [Beckham] and I always ensure we are there for our children. We work hard but family comes first. — David Beckham

Recording a song for a film doesn't take much time; it's hardly an hour's job, but concerts are constant, and so is travelling, so I've to take time out to work on my albums because I'm passionate about creating my own music. When you love something dearly, you set your priorities accordingly. — Kailash Kher

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

I observed that the successful farmer worked at his job. He would do his plowing, disking, harrowing, seeding, and harvesting in the proper season and at the proper time, while his neighbor was procrastinating, or off hunting and fishing while the work was still to be done. We must learn to set our priorities straight. No one can be successful in his line of work unless he works at it in the proper season and plays in the proper season. — Nathan Eldon Tanner

Look for, and work on becoming, a man or woman who, as a single, seeks God wholeheartedly, putting Him before anything else. Don't worry about impressing the opposite sex. Instead, strive to please and glorify God. Along the way you'll catch the attention of people with the same priorities. — Joshua Harris

You cannot be effective if those who work for you are not. So building their effectiveness ought to be a priority. — Richard N. Haass

We really need to care about the people we are designing for, understand what their dreams and desires and priorities are, and then we have to use that understanding as the driving force of the work we put forward, because the second we know what questions ... are important, then all we have to do is answer them. - B — Bernadette Jiwa

The budgets we work on in Congress are more than just fiscal documents; they are a reflection of our moral values as well. In choosing where to spend money, members of Congress choose what priorities they value. — Tim Walz

Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive or negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all. — Brian Tracy

When I let go of my own work, my own priorities, I lost the qualities he had been attracted to in the first place. That's how he put it. He loved the woman I was before I was in love with him. — Alexis M. Smith

Slay the idol of the seen, break the idols of performance, and believe the state of my house doesn't reflect the state of my soul...it's the priorities unseen - the prayers, the relationships, the love while doing the work - that hold the meaning, the merit. — Ann Voskamp

The first bill that President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I think it says something about his priorities that the first bill he put his name on has my name on it too. As he said that day with me by his side, 'Making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone.' — Lilly Ledbetter

People who truly have control over time always have some in their pocket to give to someone in need. A sense of priorities drives their use of time and it can shift away from the ordinary work that's easy to justify, in favor of the more ethereal, deeper things that are harder to justify. They protect their time from trivia and idiocy; these people are time rich. They provide themselves with a surplus of time. They might seem to idle, or relax more often than the rest, but that just might be a sign of their mastery, not their incompetence. — Scott Berkun

The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life. — Stephen Covey

You can expect to find these four priorities - education, economic vitality, efficiency in government and the protection of families - woven into my decisions as Governor. They will serve as my compass as I work with you to chart a future course for our state. — Dave Heineman

I don't believe that the American dream should be reserved for those who are born into the elite or somehow have been given an advantage over others. My growing-up experience is probably the most important thing that guides my priorities and my work today. — Ken Salazar

Happiness isn't found in some finite checklist of goals that we can diligently complete and then coast. It's how we live our lives in the process. That's why the four pillars of happiness are faith, family, community and meaningful work. Those are priorities we have to keep investing in. — Arthur C. Brooks

the invention of beer. Picture a bucket of barley left to soak overnight to soften the tough outer husk. Wild yeast would have found its way into the bucket, and someone would have thought to taste the strange, foamy mixture that resulted from the yeast going to work on all those sugars. There it was: beer! Yeasty, bubbly, mildly intoxicating beer. The priorities of people in the waning years of the Stone Age must have undergone a rapid reshuffling as society organized itself around the need to reproduce this glorious mishap on a larger scale. — Amy Stewart

Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" ever does. Imputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the achievements of non-mainstream women writers. She who "happens to be" a (non-white) Third World member, a woman, and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse and praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes. Yet the time has passed when she can confidently identify herself with a profession or artistic vocation without questioning and relating it to her color-woman condition. — Trinh T. Minh-ha

...although I suspect my solution isn't for everyone, I did learn a couple of things that possibly are. Firstly, that before I could find my Soul Mate, I had to be brutally honest about how much room there was in my life for him, and be prepared to rearrange my priorities accordingly. Secondly, that I believed that with hard work, I would find an exciting job, lovely friends, and a body that didn't wobble too much when I walked - yet, strangely (or perhaps because I'd been hurt and disappointed before), I had no such expectations of my love life. When it came to earning a decent boyfriend, I lacked the same confidence and ambition. — Jennifer Cox

It's much nicer to be praised than to be damned. But you have to have a certain sense of your own priorities and ideas about what works and what doesn't because otherwise, if you're just looking for eternal validation all the time, you can be motivated by the wrong things and I don't think it's as personally satisfying in your own work. — Ben Affleck

There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time. — Gudjon Bergmann

Because the culture we breathe and work in rushes against rest. It equates our worth with production and wealth and fame. The more we work toward those goals, the more society assigns us worth. — Mary E. DeMuth

Prayer is the most important activity a born-again Christian can perform. It should head your list of priorities, for certainly the world around us desperately needs prayer. Prayer will open the door for God to do a glorious work in these last days. Prayer will stem the tide of evil. — Chuck Smith