50 Inspirational Productivity Quotes to Ignite Your Motivation

"The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today."

- Nolan Bushnell

"Time management is about life management."

- Idowu Koyenikan

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it."

- Steve Jobs

"Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort."

- Paul J. Meyer

"The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today."

- Nolan Bushnell

"Time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends."

- Brian Tracy

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

- Steve Jobs

""The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.""

- Stephen Covey

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

- Steve Jobs

""Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.""

- Stephen King

"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

"Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition–in having put forth the best within you."

- Henry J. Kaiser

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.'s mother

"You get to decide where your time goes. You can either spend it moving forward, or you can spend it putting out fires. You decide. And if you don’t decide, others will decide for you."

- Tony Morgan

"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Work hard, have fun, and make history."

- Jeff Bezos

"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

"Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Start by doing what is necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

- Saint Francis of Assisi

"Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes in a day."

- Denis Waitley

"He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."

- Muhammad Ali

"Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life."

- Alan Lakein

"There is no substitute for hard work."

- Thomas A. Edison

"Don't confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy."

- Robin Sharma

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence."

- Calvin Coolidge

"The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: hard work, stick-to-itiveness, and common sense."

- Thomas Edison

"Knowledge is the source of wealth. Applied to tasks we already know, it becomes productivity. Applied to tasks that are new, it becomes innovation."

- Peter Drucker

"Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else."

- Peter Drucker

"Over the long run, the unglamorous habit of frequency fosters both productivity and creativity."

- Gretchen Rubin

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal."

- Henry Ford

""Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.""

- Franz Kafka

"The best time to start was last year. Failing that, today will do."

- Chris Guillebeau

""Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.""

- Caterina Fake

"Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

- Francis of Assisi

""Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.""

- Zig Ziglar

""It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?""

- Henry David Thoreau

""Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.""

- Napoleon Hill

""The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.""

- Walt Disney

""If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.""

- Bruce Lee

"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

"Either you run the day, or the day runs you."

- Jim Rohn

"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all."

- Peter Drucker

"The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it."

- Henry David Thoreau

"It's not knowing what to do, it's doing what you know."

- Tony Robbins

"Focus on being productive instead of busy."

- Tim Ferris

"The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."

- Stephen Covey

"Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves."

- Dale Carnegie

"If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves."

- David Allen

"It's not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less."

- Nathan W. Morris

"The really happy people are those who have broken the chains of procrastination, those who find satisfaction in doing the job at hand. They're full of eagerness, zest, productivity. You can be, too."

- Norman Vincent Peale

"You don't need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment."

- Seth Godin

"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done."

- Bruce Lee

"Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year–and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!"

- Tony Robbins

"Nothing is particularly hard when you divide it into small jobs."

- Henry Ford

"Don't wait. The time will never be just right."

- Napoleon Hill

"It is not enough to be busy…. The question is: What are we busy about?"

- Henry David Thoreau

"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."

- Thomas Alva Edison

"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 LaBeouf

"It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer."

- Albert Einstein

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

- Walt Disney

"You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win."

- Zig Ziglar

"Multitasking is a lie"

- Gary Keller

"Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy."

- Norman Vincent Peale

"There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction."

- John F. Kennedy

"The key is in not spending time, but in investing it."

- Stephen R. Covey

"The shorter way to do many things is to only do one thing at a time."

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made of."

- Bruce Lee

"When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority."

- Simon Fulleringer

"If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves."

- David Allen

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done."

- Bruce Lee

"Action is the foundational key to all success."

- Pablo Picasso

"Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress."

- James Clear

"Don’t confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy."

- Robin Sharma

"Dale Carnegie put it best. “Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration, and resentment."

- Dale Carnegie

"Productivity is to create asymmetrical situations where your one good input creates many good outputs."

- Richie Norton

"Making the jump between knowing and doing is what productivity is all about."

- Chris Bailey

"You can do anything, but not everything."

- David Allen

"If you want to double your productively, shorten the timeline to by 50%."

- Richie Norton

"Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard."

- Caterina Fake

"Start doing something, you’ll continue.. why? Because motivation doesn’t cause action. Action causes motivation."

- Neil Pasricha

"You may delay, but time will not."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Either you run the day or the day runs you."

- Jim Rohn

"Make each day your masterpiece."

- John Wooden

"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

- Alexander Graham Bell

"To do two things at once is to do neither."

- Publius Syrus

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."

- Sir Edmund Hillary

"Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed."

- Peter Drucker

"When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding."

- David Allen

"Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest."

- Leo Babauta

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

- Stephen King

"Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

- Francis Of Assisi

"Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you."

- Carl Sandburg

"One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all."

- Brian Tracy

"If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe."

- Abraham Lincoln

"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

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."

- Albert Einstein

"The best way out is always through."

- Robert Frost

"Remember that failure is an event, not a person."

- Zig Ziglar

"What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You don’t need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment."

- Seth Godin

"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

"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

"For real productivity, however, we need to prioritize people. You’re a human being, not a human doing."

- Michael Hyatt

"Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well."

- Louisa May Alcott

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot."

- Michael Altshuler

"Tomorrow is the thing that’s always coming but never arrives. Today is the thing that’s already here and never leaves. And because that’s the case, I would much prefer to invest in today than sit around waiting for an arrival that’s not arriving."

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

"I must govern the clock, not be governed by it."

- Golda Meir

"Never mistake motion for action."

- Ernest Hemingway

"Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. Exhaustion affects your quality and productivity."

- Jeff VanderMeer

"The essence of self-discipline is to do the important thing rather than the urgent thing."

- Barry Werner

"If you want something done, give it to a busy man."

- Preston Sturges

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."

- Charles Darwin

"Life's gardeners pluck the weeds and care only for the productive plants."

- Bryant McGill

"You are where you are and what you are because of yourself, nothing else. Nature is neutral. Nature doesn't care. If you do what other successful people do, you will enjoy the same results and rewards that they do. And if you don't, you won't."

- Brian Tracy

"If you work without being distracted, you can do so much in one hour. Something that is not even achievable in a month, especially if you are not living with a Procrasdemon – a blood curdling time-wasting machine."

- Neeraj Agnihotri

""The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.""

- Benjamin E. Mays

""Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.""

- Bill Gates

"Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them."

- David Allen

"The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one’s day and every night to examine the results obtained."

- Alexis Carrel

"Ordinary people think merely of spending time, great people think of using it."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

"Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before."

- Franz Kafka

"Great acts are made up of small deeds."

- Lao Tzu

"You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong."

- Warren Buffett

"When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that in itself is a choice."

- William James

"Sometimes, things may not go your way, but the effort should be there every single night."

- Michael Jordan

"The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity."

- Tom Peters

"I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year."

- Warren Buffett

"To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way."

- Corita Kent

"To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"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

"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

"There is never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to do it over."

- John W. Bergman

"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."

- Chinese Proverb

"If you have time to whine then you have time to find a solution."

- Dee Dee Artner

"If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do."

- Samuel Butler

"Life is too complicated not to be orderly."

- Martha Stewart

"One can find time for everything if one is never in a hurry."

- Mikhail Bulgakov

"Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."

- Coco Chanel

"The law of nature is: Do the thing, and you shall have the power, but they who do not the thing have not the power."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only way to do a lot of work is to make it fun."

- Meir Ezra

"Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment, that is what’s real."

- Sara Paddison

"Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all."

- Nathan W. Morris

"Maybe you will be able to rebuild everything you have lost. But time, my friend, is always ticking. And remember, no matter what you do, you will never be able to win it back again."

- Neeraj Agnihotri

"The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings."

- Thomas Sowell

"There is only now. And look! How rich we are in it."

- Vanna Bonta

"When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice."

- William James

"A wonderful emotion to get things moving when one is stuck is anger. It was anger more than anything else that had set me off, roused me into productivity and creativity."

- Mary Garden

"It’s a misconception that remote workers are lazy or not as productive or don’t get as much done. Trust is so important. If you have relationship mistrust and you require your team to be in front of you so you can stare over their shoulders and look at their computer screens, they’re also not going to operate with a level of trust. In a remote environment, you have that trust and people are generally getting more work done. They’re more productive and are able to succeed."

- Greg Caplan

"If you want an easy job to seem mighty hard, just keep putting it off."

- Richard Miller

"Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable."

- Coco Chanel

"Touch paper only once."

- Robert Allen

"Youth is an unpleasant period; for then it is not possible or not prudent to be productive in any sense whatsoever."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow."

- Robert Kiyosaki

"Having the flexibility to work out of your home, your favorite cafe, or even an airport (provided they have the Holy Grail that is free wifi) is a workplace game-changer."

- Alina Heim

"The whole conversation is about how remote work is different, instead of being about the amazing tools we have at our disposal that remote teams and non-remote teams are able to use at any time. We have this opportunity to have a lot more freedom in our environment compared to when we had to be in an office, or even in school, 40 hours per week."

- Hiten Shah

"Working from my home is worth a hundred thousand dollars just on its own – because of the freedom and because of the time-saving."

- Erik Allebest

"The old rules of what makes a great team still apply, whether you’re a remote team or not. You can’t build a culture if you don’t have trust, accountability, and mutual respect. The best way to kill a culture is to stop trusting people and stop giving people the respect and the responsibilities they most likely want in their jobs."

- Tracey Halvorsen

"The ability to be alone with your thoughts is, in fact, one of the key advantages of working remotely."

- Jason Fried

"Create with the heart; build with the mind."

- Criss Jami

"Suddenly my location was completely irrelevant to my ability to make a living."

- Bernard Vukas

"Not everyone has an office, so it’s all right to work at your dining room table or couch. My advice is to try and create some space between the places you are working and the places you are relaxing."

- Hailley Griffis

"Remote work is the future of work."

- Alexis Ohanian

"Sometimes, getting it done is better than perfect."

"Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week."

"Time is not refundable; use it with intention."

- Unknown

"Starve your distraction and feed your focus."