100 Life-Changing Time Management Quotes

Although time is the most precious resource we have, it can also be one of the most difficult to manage. We are all overwhelmed with tasks and commitments, which can make us feel overwhelmed. At this point, time management quotes are useful.

Why? Reading inspirational quotes can make developing better time management habits easier. In addition to reminding us of the importance of using our time wisely, they can help us stay focused on what we want to accomplish.

With that said, here are 100 time management quotes that will change your life.

Why Time Management Is Important

1. “All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that” — Baltasar Gracian

2. “Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.” — Alan Lakein

3. “Time is the school in which we learn; time is the fire in which we burn.” — Delmore Schwartz

4. “Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” — M. Scott Peck

5. “We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch.” — John F. Kennedy

6. “Take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves.” — Lord Chesterfield

7. “Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.” — Lao Tzu

8. “The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: ‘I did not have time.'” — Franklin Field

9. “Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.” — Samuel Smiles

10. “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” — Carl Sandburg

Planning Is Key

11. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin

12. “He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.” — Victor Hugo

1.3 “If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.” — Lee Iacocca

14. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.”-– Zig Ziglar

15. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

16. “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot”–Michael Altshuler

17. “Quit thinking time is ‘out there.’ Take ownership of time – acknowledge that you are where it comes from – and it will stop owning you. Claim time as yours, and it will release its claim on you.” — Gay Hendricks

18. “Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.” — Chinese Proverb

19. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

20. “It’s how we spend our time here, and now that really matters. If you are fed up with the way you have come to interact with time, change it.” — Marcia Wieder

21. “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

22. “Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.” — Victor Hugo

23. “One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.” — Johann Wolfgang con Goethe

24. “Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.” — Anonymous

25. “The common man is not concerned about the passage of time; the man of talent is driven by it.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

26. “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” — Yogi Berra

27. “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” — Peter F. Drucker

28. “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” — Pablo Picasso

29. “For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” — African Proverb

30. “Unless you have definite, precise, clearly set goals, you are not going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you. — Zig Ziglar

The Art of Prioritizing

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

32. “What comes first, the compass or the clock? Before one can truly manage time (the clock), it is important to know where you are going, what your priorities and goals are, and in which direction you are headed (the compass). Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Rather than always focusing on what’s urgent, learn to focus on what is really important.” — Unknown

33. “You must vie with time’s swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly.” — Seneca

34. “The key is not in spending time, but in investing in it.” — Stephen R. Covey

35. “We all know our money isn’t infinite, yet we end up treating our time, energy, and attention as if they are.”— Shane Parrish

36. “Set goals and stay focused on your priorities.” — David Reynolds

37. “Life is short. Focus on what really matters most; you should change your priorities over time.” — Roy T. Bennett

38. “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

39. “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” — Henry David Thoreau

40. “Your priorities aren’t what you say they are. They are revealed by how you live.” — Unknown

41. “Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.” –Alan Lakein

42. “Good things happen when you get your priorities straight.” — Scott Caan

43. “We all have 1440 minutes of life today. How, what, or who will you spend it on? Choose wisely. You have 1439 left.” — Sotero M. Lopez II

44. “The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.” — Brandon Sanderson

45. “Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.” — Keri Russell

46. “One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.” — Malcolm S. Forbes

47. “The most important part of every business is to know what ought to be done.” — Lucius Columella

48. “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

49. “Start by doing what’s necessary; then what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” — St. Francis of Assisi

50. “Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.” — Timothy Ferris

Beating Procrastination

51. “Procrastination is the foundation of all disasters.” –– Pandora Poikilos

52. “Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.” — Anonymous

53. “The best time to start was last year. Failing that, today will do.” — Chris Guillebeau

54. “Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.” — Napoleon Hill

55. “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.”-– Wayne Dyer

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

57. “I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.” — Rabindranath Tagore

58. “You may delay, but time will not.” — Benjamin Franklin

59. “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” — William James

60. “A year from now, you may wish you had started today.” — Karen Lamb

Boosting Productivity

61. “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln

62. “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” — Warren Buffet

63. “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

64. “One can find time for everything if one is never in a hurry.” — Mikhail Bulgakov

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

66 .“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

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

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

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

70. “You can do anything, but not everything.” — David Allen

Staying Focused

71. “Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment, that is what’s real.” — Sara Paddison

72. “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”–Mark Twain

73. “It’s surprising how much free time and productivity you gain when you lose the business in your mind.” — Brittany Burgunder

74. “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”– Albert Einstein

75. “The essence of self-discipline is to do the important thing rather than the urgent thing.” — Barry Werner

76. “Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.” –– Bruce Lee

77. “You must remain focused on your journey to greatness.” — Les Brown

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

79. “Focusing is about saying No.” — Steve Jobs

80. “Learning how to rein in your thoughts and focus is going to help you to achieve your goals in life. Without focus, you can never achieve anything.” — Eric Phillips

Stop Multitasking

81. “Be like a postage stamp; stick to one thing until you get there.” — Josh Billings

82. “To do two things at once is to do neither.” — Publius Syrus

83. “You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.” — Gary Keller

84. “If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.”— Lee Iacocca

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

86. “One cannot manage too many affairs: like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.” — Chinese Proverb

87. “Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation.” — Daniel Levitin

88. “The shorter way to do many things is to only do one thing at a time.” — Mozart

89. “Multitasking is the ability to screw everything up simultaneously.” — Jeremy Clarkson

90. “There’s no such thing as multitasking.” — Jim Loehr

Stop Wasting Time

91. “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

92. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs

93. “Don’t mistake movement for achievement. It’s easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: ‘Busy doing what?’ ” — Jim Rohn

94. “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.” –Thomas Jefferson

95. “In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.” — Sir John Lubbock

96. “A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” — Charles Darwin

97. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.” — Zig Ziglar

98. “Don’t interpret anything too much. This is time waster number 1.” — Dee Dee Artner

99. “Don’t waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence—doing your best.” — Laurence Olivier

100. “I didn’t waste my time on things I didn’t love.” — Patti Smith

FAQs

What is time management?

The art of time management is planning and controlling how you spend your time. In order to achieve your goals most efficiently, you need to set goals, prioritize tasks, and develop strategies.

Why is time management important?

The importance of time management lies in its ability to help you:

Your productivity will increase, and your goals will be met.
It will reduce stress and overwhelm.
Take advantage of your free time by doing things you enjoy.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance.

How can I improve my time management skills?

You can use a variety of time management techniques and strategies. You can start by following these tips:

Set goals and priorities. What are your short- and long-term goals? Prioritizing and focusing on the most important tasks is easier if you know your goals.
Plan your time. Organize your schedule and schedule specific times for each task. As a result, you’ll stay on track and avoid distractions.
Break down large tasks into smaller ones. When it comes to large tasks, it can be overwhelming and hard to get started. You can manage them better if you break them down into smaller, more manageable parts.
Eliminate distractions. Whenever possible, eliminate distractions when working on a task. Ensure your phone is turned off, your computer is closed, and you’re working in a quiet room.
Take breaks. The importance of taking breaks throughout the day cannot be overstated. Make sure you get up and move around or do something you enjoy. This will help you stay focused and refreshed.

What are some common time management challenges?

There are many challenges associated with time management, including:

Procrastination. Delaying tasks until later is one of the most common time management challenges. Procrastination can be attributed to a variety of reasons, but there are also ways to overcome it.
Perfectionism. It can be difficult to manage your time effectively if you try to be perfect at everything. You should know that you can make mistakes and that it is better to get something done than to get it perfect.
Distractions. It can be difficult to focus on your work when you are distracted. Strategies like turning off your phone and working in a quiet area can eliminate distractions.
Overcommitting. The amount of time you have, and the commitment you can make is significant. Keep your commitments to a minimum.
Multitasking. While multitasking might seem like an excellent way to get more done, it is actually inefficient. You’ll likely make mistakes and take longer to complete tasks when you’re multitasking.
Unrealistic expectations. The amount of work we expect to accomplish in a day can sometimes be unrealistic. To achieve your goals, it’s essential to be realistic about your time.

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