The Best Quotes on Productivity to Help You Get More Done

Do you often find yourself in a constant battle with time, struggling to get everything on your to-do list done?

As a small business owner or high performer, efficiency and productivity are crucial for success. With endless distractions and never-ending tasks, it can be challenging to stay focused and motivated.

However, one of the most powerful tools for staying on track is inspiration from others who have mastered the art of productivity.

In this blog post, we’ll examine some of the best productivity quotes from successful entrepreneurs and leaders. These quotes will help you boost your efficiency and get more done in less time.

So grab a cup of coffee (or tea), and let’s jump into these wise words together!

Massive Action Quotes

“All progress take place outside the comfort zone.” – Michael John Bobak

“Over the long run, the unglamorous habit of frequency fosters both productivity and creativity.” – Gretchen Rubin

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso

“There’s a tendency to mistake preparation for productivity. You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you’ll never be successful.” – Shia LaBeou

“Creativity isn’t about wild talent as much as it’s about productivity. To find new ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t. It’s a pure numbers game.” – Robert Sutton

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Mary Schmich

“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“We mistakenly believe that there is a lot of time left in the year, and we act accordingly. We lack a sense of urgency, not realizing that every week is important, every day is important, every moment is important. Ultimately, effective execution happens daily and weekly!” – Brian P. Moran, author of The 12 Week Year (book summary)

“While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.” – Henry C. Link

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King

Goal Setting Quotes

“Successful people and companies have a habit of setting and achieving goals.” – Gino Wickman, author of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (book summary)

“Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.” – Paul Gauguin

“A good system shortens the road to the goal.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – Jim Rohn

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Zig Ziglar

“With consistency and reps and routine you’re going to achieve your goals and get where you want to be.” – ”Mandy Rose

“One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.” – Michael Korda

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” – Tony Robbins

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” – Confucius

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, author of Atomic Habits (book summary)

“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” – Benjamin E. Mays

Time Management Quotes

“Lost time is never found again.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Time management is about life management.” – Idowu Koyenikan

“Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.” – John C. Maxwell

“Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee

“Don’t waste too much time thinking about the problem. Use that time to resolve it.” –Prasanna Pasupuleti

“Time flies, and what is past is done.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Free time is the enemy of progress.” – Casey Neistat

“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes in a day.” – Denis Waitley

“The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.” – Peter Drucker

“When you waste a moment, you have killed it in a sense, squandering an irreplaceable opportunity. But when you use the moment properly, filling it with purpose and productivity, it lives on forever.” – Menachem Mendel Scheerson

“Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.” – Douglas Hofstadter

“It’s not important to protect an idea. It’s important to protect the time it takes to make it real.” – Christina Wodtke, author of Radical Focus (book summary)

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.” – Charles Richards

Essentialism (80/20 Rule) Quotes

“The things that matter the most must never be at the mercy of the things the matter the least.” – Goethe

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.” – Greg Mckeown, Essentialism (book summary)

“Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential, eliminate the rest.” – Leo Babauta

“Until my ONE Thing is done – everything else is a distraction.” – Gary Keller, author of The One Thing (book summary)

“Life’s gardeners pluck the weeds and care only for the productive plants.” – Bryant McGill

“A simple life involves, perhaps above anything else, the deliberate use of resources.” – The Minimalists

“Productivity is the deliberate, strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources, and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals.” – Dan S. Kennedy

“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, unapologetically—to say no to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.” – Chris McChesney, author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution (book summary)

“The key is to not prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey

“If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first. This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first.” – Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog (book summary)

Vision Quotes

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.” – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” – Warren Buffett

“Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.” – Scott Galloway, author of the Algebra of Happiness (book summary)

“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.” – Tim Ferriss

“Vision without traction is merely hallucination.” – Gino Wickman, author of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (book summary)

“Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.” – Stephen Hawking

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” – Bill Gates

“Forget about willpower. It’s time for why-power. Your choices are only meaningful when you connect them to your desires and dreams.” – Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect (book summary)

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. – Earl Nightingale

“As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goals and dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else’s.” – Grant Cardone, author of The 10X Rule (book summary)

Success Quotes

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke

“Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn

“Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.” – Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto (book summary)

“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but they don’t quit.” – Conrad Hilton

“Whatever your best work is, it’s something that only you can do. Only you have the set of experiences, expertise, skills, and perspectives to do it. In this great orchestra of creation of which we’re all a part, no one can play your instrument the way you do.” – Charlie Gilkey, author of Start Finishing (book summary)

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” – Warren Buffett

“Successful people are simply those with successful habits.” – Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog (book summary)

“People often remark that I’m pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you’ve got to have talent and know how to use it.” – Frank Sinatra

“If you’re not focusing on becoming so good they can’t ignore you, you’re going to be left behind.” – Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You (book summary)

“The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.” – Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited (book summary)

Focus Quotes

“To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.” – Jim Loehr, The Power of Full Engagement (book summary)

“Don’t worry about breaks every 20 minutes ruining your focus on a task. Contrary to what I might have guessed, taking regular breaks from mental tasks actually improves your creativity and productivity. Skipping breaks, on the other hand, leads to stress and fatigue.” – Tom Rath

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” – Alexander Graham Bell

“The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.” – Tom Peters

“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” – David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (book summary)

“What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.” – Susan Cain

“All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.” – Plato

“To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work.” – Cal Newport, author of Deep Work (book summary)

Mindset Quotes

“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” – David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (book summary)

“Productivity growth, however it occurs, has a disruptive side to it. In the short term, most things that contribute to productivity growth are very painful.” – Janet Yellen

“Drive thy business or it will drive thee.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Remember, the moment you accept total responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you claim the power to change anything in your life.” – Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning (book summary)

“Both good and bad days should end with productivity. Your mood affairs should never influence your work.” – Greg Evans

“The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.” – Thomas Sowell, author of Basic Economics (book summary)

“Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.” – David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (book summary)

“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” – Stephen King

“You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own mind.” – David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (book summary)

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.” – Franz Kafka

“If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.” – Jack Ma

“Every day is a new opportunity to make your life a story worth telling.” – Jairek Robbins, author of Live It (book summary)

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” – Zig Ziglar

Procrastination Quotes

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” – Mark Twain

“When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.” – David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (book summary)

“I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if I wasn’t sitting in front of a computer typing, I was wasting my time, but I pushed myself to take a wider view of what was ‘productive.’ Time spent with my family and friends was never wasted.” – Gretchen Rubin

“One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we’re idling in front of our computer screens.” – Joshua Foer

“If you want an easy job to seem mighty hard, just keep putting if off.” – Richard Miller

“The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.” – Thomas Sowell

“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.” – Dale Carnegie

Avoid Being Busy Quotes

“Focus on being productive instead of busy.” – Tim Ferriss

“Inevitably we find ourselves tackling too many things at the same time, spreading our focus so thin that nothing gets the attention it deserves. This is commonly referred to as “being busy.” Being busy, however, is not the same thing as being productive.” – Ryder Carroll, author of The Bullet Journal Method (book summary)

“Don’t confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy.” – Robin Sharma

“It is not enough to be busy…. The question is: What are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau

“Don’t mistake activity for productivity. Creativity is productivity—it just doesn’t feel like it at first.” – Gino Wickman, author of Rocket Fuel (book summary)

“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway

Habit Quotes

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” – James Clear, author of Atomic Habits (book summary)

“Consistency of performance is essential. You don’t have to be exceptional every week but as a minimum you need to be at a level that even on a bad day you get points on the board.” – Sean Dyche

“Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” – Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit (book summary)

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Will Durant

“Sometimes, things may not go your way, but the effort should be there every single night.” – Michael Jordan

“Successful people are simply those with successful habits.” – Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog (book summary)

“All our productivity, leverage, and insight comes from being part of a community, not apart from it. The goal, I think, is to figure out how to become more dependent, not less.” – Seth Godin

“Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task.” – William H. McRaven, author of Make Your Bed (book summary)

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” – F. M. Alexander

“Great acts are made up of small deeds.” – Lao Tzu

“Trust the process.”

Final Thoughts on Productivity Quotes

Productivity is not just about achieving more or checking off tasks from a to-do list. It’s about finding ways to work smarter and more efficiently so we can have more time for ourselves and the things that truly matter to us.

As Oscar Wilde once said, “The secret of life is in art.” So, let’s strive to make our lives a true masterpiece by utilizing these productivity quotes and using our time wisely.

Remember, as Marie Forleo reminds us, “If it’s not scheduled, it’s not real.” So, let’s schedule in time for self-care, creative pursuits, and building relationships.

When we feel overwhelmed or stuck, let’s take advice from Simone de Beauvoir, who famously said, “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future; act now, without delay.” 

Because every moment is an opportunity to change our lives for the better and become more productive individuals.