Productivity Quotes

Contrary to any claim of a systematically "neutral" effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive production processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence. ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

With gospel-centered productivity, peace comes first, not second. the mistake we often make is to make peace of mind the result of things we do rather than the source. ~ Matt Perman

Nobody thinks of using improvements in technology and productivity to allow people to work less and require fewer assets to achieve the same standard of living. Instead, while everybody is richer, at least in terms of stuff, no one is any wealthier. Their wealth is "safely" out of reach. If it weren't, how many would still show up for work the next day? ~ Jacob Lund Fisker

Throughout the history of the Internet, most of the innovation has come as a by-product of efforts to facilitate communication within social groups of various kinds (academics, bloggers, peer-to-peer file sharing), rather than as the result of profit-oriented investment. Rather than taking the lead, the business and government sectors have adopted innovations developed in Internet communities, and realised significant productivity gains as a result. ~ John Quiggin

A strong currency means that American consumers and businesses can buy imported goods and services more cheaply and that inflation and interest rates will be lower, ... It also puts pressure on American industry to increase productivity and competitiveness. These benefits can feed on themselves as foreign capital flows in more readily because of greater confidence in our currency. A weak dollar would have the contrary effects. ~ Robert Rubin

Doubt is a virus that attacks our self-esteem, productivity and confidence. Faith that you and your life are perfectly unfolding is the strongest vaccine. ~ Sean Stephenson

Of course, in the end, when Mapplethorpe turned out to be very gay, Smith was left with no other option than to go off and write Horses and grow the world's most influential lady mustache instead. Her hand was forced into productivity. ~ Caitlin Moran

The majority of people on earth are ignorant of what their time should be used for. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The easier you can make it inside your head, the easier it will make things outside your head. ~ Richard Bandler

Shame breeds fear. It crushes our tolerance for vulnerability, thereby killing engagement, innovation, creativity, productivity, and trust. ~ Brene Brown

To move forward, you must first take a step ~ Chase S.M. Neill

Sabbath is the celebration of life beyond and outside productivity. ~ Walter Brueggemann

It's alright if you aren't able to keep up with all the advice you get. You can't become a superman overnight. We're all imperfect and take some time inculcate new habits. ~ Vishal Ostwal

If every citizen can get rid of indiscipline syndrome, we have immense potential to build more productive, conflict-free, harmonious and peaceful communities, societies, cities, nations and world. ~ Vishwas Chavan

Time used to do irrelevancies can be channeled into something productive instead ~ Sunday Adelaja

I'm obsessed with finishing as a skill. Over the years, I've realized that so many of the good things that have come my way are because I was able to finish what I started. ~ Derek Yu

Human activity is having a major impact on the planet. We consume or have diverted a large proportion of the productivity of the land and oceans. Our hunger for land crowds out fellow species. Our waste products pollute the waters, warm the atmosphere and acidify the oceans. ~ Ian Goldin

Is not as if you can not suck the nipples of the queen like the way you dealt with other women but it's just that she understands the productivity in security and relationship. ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

If you commit to giving more time than you have to spend, you will constantly be running from time debt collectors. ~ Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Productivity, put simply, is the name we give our attempts to figure out the best uses of our energy, intellect, and time as we try to seize the most meaningful rewards with the least wasted effort. It's a process of learning how to succeed with less stress and struggle. It ~ Charles Duhigg

Organization is a priority for me because it blesses my children. Even without considering the benefits of productivity or efficiency, the stability of my children depends on my organization. ~ Jamie C. Martin

There are botany textbooks that contain pages and pages of growth curves, but it is always the lazy-S-shaped ones that confuse my students the most. Why would a plant decrease in mass just when it is nearing its plateau of maximum productivity? I remind them that this shrinking has proved to be a signal of reproduction. As the green plants reach maturity, some of their nutrients are pulled back and repurposed toward flowers and seeds. Production of the new generation comes at a significant cost to the parent, and you can see it in a cornfield, even from a great distance. ~ Hope Jahren

Your daily actions should be productive ~ Sunday Adelaja

Joining a Facebook group about creative productivity is like buying a chair about jogging. ~ Merlin Mann

The skills and productivity of American Workers, not to mention the taxes they pay, are the greatest economic resource our country has. To condemn large numbers of them to unemployment, to deprive the Treasury of their tax contributions and to force them to live on unemployment at public expense is the most expensive luxury any society ever chose to buy. ~ Lane Kirkland

I read these biographies all the time about these successful people and one of the patterns that I've discovered, and what I've discovered in myself and all of my friends who have become very successful, has been the fact that they say "Yes" to a lot of commitments.

If you just have this one goal, then that one thing may get shoved under the rug and procrastinated on. But if you say yes to a lot of things; if you almost overcommit, then you probably won't get all of the things you've committed to complete. But you'll get a good portion of them. The 80% that you DO get done will still be more than that one person who said no to a lot of things. The busiest people get the most things done. ~ David Tian Ph.D

Just what do we tax under our current system? Work, that's what. Hard work and productivity. The harder you work, the more you achieve. The more you achieve, the more you're taxed. To make matters worse, under our "progressive" income tax system, the harder you work, the more severe the punishment actually is! ~ Neal Boortz

Never let anyone or any social attitude stand in the way of your productivity. ~ Rita Mae Brown

He loves productivity seminars because they make him feel so productive - never mind that nothing has been produced yet.) ~ Kelly McGonigal

Like resilience, self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. Productivity and stability are the usual excuses for turning creative human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes. Or for narrowing the genetic variability of crop plants. Or for establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers. Self-organization ~ Donella H. Meadows

Few ever lived to old age, and fewer still ever became distinguished, who were not in the habit of early rising. ~ John Todd

Time Progression: Wasting >>Spending >> Managing >> Investing ~ Elizabeth Grace Saunders

The added cost of higher wages is offset by savings from lower labor turnover and higher labor productivity. ~ Anonymous

If you end your day feeling like you got nothing done, it's because you weren't working: you were busy, not productive. ~ Richie Norton

In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap. ~ James Surowiecki

A home for everything, and like goes with like....If you consistently apply [this principle] all over your life, your life will be and remain organized. ~ Tim Challies

Improved productivity means less human sweat, not more. ~ Henry Ford

Empowering small farmers to increase productivity, improve crop quality and access reliable markets is critical to addressing global hunger and poverty. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

The Federal Reserve's objectives of maximum employment and price stability do not, by themselves, ensure a strong pace of economic growth or an improvement in living standards. The most important factor determining living standards is productivity growth, defined as increases in how much can be produced in an hour of work. ~ Janet Yellen

I am convinced more than ever that good communication and leadership are all about connecting. If you can connect with others at every level -one-on-one, in groups, and with an audience-your relationships are stronger, your sense of community improves, your ability to create teamwork increases, your influence increases, and your productivity skyrockets. ~ John C. Maxwell

As for my slowness as a writer - that's been a struggle, no question. We live in a culture that values and rewards machine-speed productivity. Even the arts are expected to conform to the Taylor model of productivity. ~ Junot Diaz

Medicine today invests heavily in information technology, yet the promised improvement in patient safety and productivity frankly have not been realized, ~ Peter Pronovost

The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm; it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world--temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind--what used in the university to be called a 'dry-ball'--but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity ~ John Steinbeck

Self sufficiency appears to be a worthy goal, but it's now impossible if you want to actually get anything done. 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

We have an opportunity to improve productivity and cut costs while growing our way to a better and a more comfortable operating environment. I don't think anyone feels comfortable about bumping around where we are today. ~ Scott McNealy

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

In the old days, it had been talent and style and brilliance and now it was more and more productivity. ~ David Halberstam

Capitalist production ... was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this. ~ Friedrich Engels

Without proper rest during the weekend our new week could be unproductive. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity. ~ Lionel Shriver

Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while. ~ Corita Kent

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

The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The relationship between nurturance and moral self-interest can be seen most clearly in nurturant forms of business practice. It involves the humane treatment of employees, the creation of a safe and humane workplace, social and ecological responsibility, fairness in hiring and promotion, the building of a work community, the development of excellent communication between employees and management and between the company and its customers, opportunities for employee self-development, a positive role in the larger community, scrupulous honesty, a regard for one's customers and for the public, and excellent customer service. Policies such as these have increased the productivity and success of many businesses. They are models of how Nurturant Parent morality can function to help businesses be successful and to allow owners, investors, and employees to seek their self-interest within this moral system. Moral ~ George Lakoff

People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. ~ Denis Waitley

If today your company doesn't know what its ONE Thing is, then the company's ONE Thing is to find out. ~ Gary Keller

I figure if Doc is right about the time I have left,I should wrap up my adolescence in the next few days, get into my early productive stages about the third week of school, go through my midlife crisis during Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, redouble my efforts at productivity and think about my legacy, say, Easter, and start cashing in my 401(k)s a couple weeks before Memorial Day. ~ Chris Crutcher

Productivity is the essence of life ~ Sunday Adelaja

Compared to men writers of like distinction and years of life, few women writers have had lives of unbroken productivity, or leave behind a 'body of work.' Early beginnings, then silence; or clogged late ones (foreground silences); long periods between books (hidden silences); characterize most of us. ~ Tillie Olsen

If the great ocean herself needs replenishment, what could make you think you don't? ~ Salma Farook

It is time to rekindle the spirit of the Renaissancee to achieve a golden age that will be a turning point for human productivity and quality of life. ~ Joel Garreau

Don't think about what can happen in a month. Don't think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be. ~ Eric Thomas

When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt

With teamwork we are able to multiply our output and minimize individual input. ~ Ogwo David Emenike

Those who are great know a secret that the remaining lot do not know. ~ Sunday Adelaja

After a major loss of dynamism in the 1960s, productivity growth rates began dropping in most countries, falling by half in the U.S. in the 1970s and more or less ceasing altogether in France, Germany and Britain in the late 1990s. ~ Edmund Phelps

That tertiary education is under a sustained assault by a political and - it often seems - social consensus that equates all education with training for increased productivity, only makes academe a still more promising environment for a contrarian. ~ Will Self

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

From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy. It's almost easy to want to sit down at your desk when you have a free five minutes and try to clear out some of the incoming emails rather than strip things strategically and foundationally and ask about what the most important objectives for you and the company are. ~ Ivanka Trump

Misers makes money their lord, but the spenders makes it their slaves and servants ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital. ~ Karl Marx

Positive psychology is the study of what constitutes excellence in individuals, communities, and workplaces. It incorporates the study of productivity, resilience, motivation, emotions, strengths, team dynamics, and more. ~ Margaret Greenberg

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy. ~ Lao-Tzu

Sometimes the biggest gain in productive energy will come from cleaning the cobwebs, dealing with old business, and clearing the desks - cutting loose debris that's impeding forward motion. ~ David Allen

Stocks are the things to own over time. Productivity will increase and stocks will increase with it. There are only a few things you can do wrong. One is to buy or sell at the wrong time. Paying high fees is the other way to get killed. The best way to avoid both of these is to buy a low-cost index fund, and buy it over time. Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy, but don't think you can outsmart the market. If a cross-section of American industry is going to do well over time, then why try to pick the little beauties and think you can do better? Very few people should be active investors. ~ Alice Schroeder

Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class. ~ James Altucher

You should train disciples and followers to work and perform better than you did ~ Sunday Adelaja

To convert a day is to produce a product ~ Sunday Adelaja

As a consequence, progress has come to mean simply more power, more profit, more productivity, more paper prosperity, all of which are convertible into standards concerned only with size or magnitude rather than quality or excellence. ~ Alex Campbell

The punch line is 'knock the morale of an employee and organizational productivity is punctured'. ~ Henrietta Newton Martin

Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed. ~ Sydney Smith

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence. ~ Alan Watts

I hear many people share with me that they just 'have to do this thing' before they can relax and slow down.

The truth is that taking the time to be still and reflective actually increases productivity and gives more joy to what you're doing when it's time to take action again. ~ Maria Erving

To reach the pinnacle of your writings potential; productivity becomes obsolete. ~ Marston James

Saying that programmers should just accomplish twice as much doesn't work. They can gain skills and effectiveness, but they cannot get more done on demand. More time at the desk does not equal increased productivity for creative work. ~ Kent Beck

A happy and productive person is one who understands that his or her job is not the purpose of his or her life. Go on vacation, use up your sick days, ask for a temporary leave-of-absence - anything that allows you to recharge your batteries away from your typical routine. No leave, no life. ~ Del Suggs

In the future, every industry should be an environmental industry. In a world where energy and carbon emissions are constrained, every business must take resource productivity seriously ~ David Miliband

The concept of Nature does not evoke only the residue of what had not been constructed by me, but also a productivity which is not ours, although we can use it--that is, an originary productivity that continues beneath the artificial creations of man. It both partakes of the most ancient, and is something always new. ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Efficiency, which is doing things right, is irrelevant until you work on the right things. ~ Peter Drucker

Soetsu Yanagi, in the "Unknown Craftsman", writes, "Man is most free when his tools are proportionate to his needs." For example, for optimal productivity, a carpenter needs woodworking tools and an environment conducive to his work, not a steam shovel or army tank. ~ Jeff Davidson

There has not been a piece of technology designed to save labor that has not increased labor. Word processors allow you to do what your secretary used to do for you. The Internet, BlackBerries, iPhones, yes they keep you tethered, but that's not the main problem. It's that along with increasing personal productivity, they increase the expectation of productivity. It no longer becomes a bonus to do the work of one and a half men, but the norm. And then when everyone's working at one hundred and fifty percent capacity, they can fire a third of the workforce and still maintain output. ~ Wayne Gladstone

English teachers, workshops, and myths try to make writers slow down. We are the ONLY ART on the planet that tells young artists to not practice and do less to get better. Head-shaking in its stupidity. And new writers buy into that. ~ Dean Wesley Smith

I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university. ~ John Jakes

Notwithstanding the extravagance of some of their characters, these nineteenth-century novelists describe a world in which inequality was to a certain extent necessary: if there had not been a sufficiently wealthy minority, no one would have been able to worry about anything other than survival. This view of inequality deserves credit for not describing itself as meritocratic, if nothing else. In a sense, a minority was chosen to live on behalf of everyone else, but no one tried to pretend that this minority was more meritorious or virtuous than the rest. … Modern meritocratic society, especially in the United States, is much harder on the losers, because it seeks to justify domination on the ground of justice, virtue, and merit, to say nothing of the insufficient productivity of those at the bottom. ~ Thomas Piketty

The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient. ~ Will Durant

The truth is that health-care reform will always be a nuisance, with version 2.0 followed by next year's 2.1. As long as it boosts productivity, it's worth it. ~ Jim Cooper

By contrast, training and goal-setting programs had a far greater impact on productivity than did anything involving payment.32 ~ Alfie Kohn

On a planet where for thousands of years, even today, a woman's worth has been judged exclusively by the productivity of her womb, what the hell is the point of a barren woman? ~ Elissa Stein And Susan Kim

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