It may not seem like it. But, a lot is going on in the autumn. Between getting back to a routine after your summer vacay to getting the kids back to school and adjusting to the end of daylight saving time (happens tomorrow, Sunday, November 7th), now you’ll have to finalize business plans for the holiday season. It’s easy for your productivity to get derailed.
The good news? If you find that you’re struggling with productivity this fall, use the following quotes to get you back on track.
Planning Quotes
If there is one secret to being productive — it’s planning.
You’re more likely to operate at peak productivity when you plan how you’re going to spend your time in advance. The alternative is taking things as they come and without a plan.
In turn, this almost guarantees both low efficiency and productivity. It’s also a chaotic way to live when you have a full plate.
1. “By Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
2. “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”– Paul J. Meyer
3. “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem
4. “Long-range planning works best in the short term.”– Doug Evelyn
5. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
6. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”– George Lorimer
7. “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra
8. “You don’t need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment.”– Seth Godin
9. “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” – John F. Kennedy
10. “Your daily choices and actions should be rational and productive.”– Sunday Adelaja
11. “The more time you spend contemplating what you should have done…you lose valuable time planning what you can and will do.” – Lil Wayne
12. “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”– Dwight D. Eisenhower
13. “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” – Confucius
14. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell
15. “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
16. “Unless you have definite, precise, clearly set goals, you are not going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you.” – Zig Ziglar
17. “Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” – Tom Landry
18. “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Richard Cushing
19. “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein
20. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” – Thomas Edison
Priority Quotes
The definition of productivity means being more than just busy. Being productive requires that you remain focused on achieving all of your goals in the most accurate and efficient way possible. And, that’s only possible when you do the right things at the right time.
21. “Life is short. Focus on what really matters most; you should change your priorities over time.” – Roy T. Bennett
22. “When my company started really growing, I didn’t have any help in my house at all. I had the upkeep of my daily life, I had a one-year-old and a three-year-old, and I had my house. So I had to prioritize.” – Julie Aigner Clark
23. “It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”– Henry David Thoreau
24. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein
25. “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” – Stephen R. Covey
26. “Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest.”– Leo Babauta
27. “Set aside time to plan how you will spend your time. Think about what’s most important. Then do those things first.” – Frank Bettger
28. “Our greatest danger in life is in permitting the urgent things to crowd out the important.” – Charles E. Hummel
29. “The necessary has never been man’s top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness.” – Eric Hoffer
30. “Learn how to separate the majors and the minors. A lot of people don’t do well simply because they major in minor things.” – Jim Rohn
31. “Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions.” – Dallin H. Oaks
32. “Instead of saying ‘I don’t have time’ try saying ‘it’s not a priority and see how that feels.” – Laura Vanderkam
33. “When you have too many top priorities, you effectively have no top priorities.” – Stephen Covey
34. “Let us reflect on what is truly of value in life, what gives meaning to our lives, and set our priorities on the basis of that.” – Dalai Lama
35. “When you’re clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it’s clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar.” – Victoria Moran
36. “Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” – H. L. Hunt
37. “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.” – Russian Proverb
38. “Think of priorities, not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.” – Dan Millman
39. “The Principe of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.” – Steven Pressfield
40. “Times of transition are strenuous, but I love them. They are an opportunity to purge, rethink priorities, and be intentional about new habits. We can make our new normal any way we want.” – Kristin Armstrong
Quotes to Help You Eliminate Obstacles and Adversity
No matter what task you try to accomplish, and how the amount of planning you did, there are always going to be obstacles in the way. These challenges aren’t just frustrating; they can also interfere with focus and flow state. In some cases, they may cause procrastination.
41. “If you have time to whine, then you have time to find a solution.”– Dee Dee Artner
42. “When someone tells me “no,” it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.”– Karen E. Quinones Miller
43. “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”– Winston Churchill
44. “Sometimes, things may not go your way, but the effort should be there every single night.” – Michael Jordan
45. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”– Earl Nightingale
46. “One who conquers the sea today is ready to conquer the ocean tomorrow.”– Matshona Dhliwayo
47. “We don’t develop courage by being happy every day. We develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”– Barbara De Angelis
48. “A challenge only becomes an obstacle when you bow to it.”– Ray Davis
49. “Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.”– Susan Gale
50. “The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”– Jean-Baptiste Poqeulin (Moliere)
51. “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”– Haruki Murakami
52. “Because some people see a wall, and assume that’s the end of their journey. Others see it, and decide it’s just the beginning.”- Angeline Trevena
53. “There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”– Malcolm X
54. “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”– Christopher Reeve
55. “If you are facing a new challenge or being asked to do something that you have never done before, don’t be afraid to step out. You have more capability than you think you do, but you will never see it unless you place a demand on yourself for more.”– Joyce Meyer
56. “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you’re doing the impossible.”– Francis of Assisi
57. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”– Robert Kennedy
58. “The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.”– Tricia Cunningham
59. “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on days when you feel good.”– Jerry West
60. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”– Wayne Gretzky
Quotes to Inspire, Motivate, and Take Action
Need a shot in the arm? Use the following quotes to get you inspired, motivated, and take action.
61. “Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” – Thomas Jefferson
62. “Dream big, start small, but most of all, start.” – Simon Sinek
63. “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
64. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Ziglar
65. “An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.” – Arnold Glasow
66. “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.” – William B. Sprague
67. “Be content to act, and leave the talking to others.” – Baltasar Gracian
68. “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but don’t quit.” – Conrad Hilton
69. “People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.” – Lewis Cass
70. “Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless.” – Tim Blixseth
71. “Let your performance do the thinking.” – Charlotte Brontë
72. “Take action! An inch of movement will bring you closer to your goals than a mile of action.” – Steve Maraboli
73. “Well done is better than well said.”- Benjamin Franklin
74. “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooden
75. “Action is the antidote to despair.” – Joan Baez
76. “Doing nothing gets you nothing.” – Sean Reichle
77. “Stay focused and don’t allow distractions to fill your mind or derail you from taking continued action.” – Byron Pulsifer
78. “You cannot score a goal when you are sitting on the bench. To do so, you have to dress up and enter the game.” – Israelmore Ayivor
79. “You’re a doer, because you’re prepared to make the necessary effort to translate your dream into action.” – Paul McCabe
80. “There is only one proof of ability—action.” – Marie Ebner-Eschenbach
81. “Nothing is impossible; the word itself says ‘I’m possible!'” – Audrey Hepburn
82. “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
83. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
84. “Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.” – Franz Kafka
85. Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. – Vince Lombardi
86. “You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” – Zig Ziglar
87. “Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions” – John Randolph
88. “Both good and bad days should end with productivity. Your mood affairs should never influence your work.” – Greg Evans
89. “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.” – Norman Vincent Peale
90. “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.” – Thomas Watson
91. “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” – David Allen
92. “Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Picasso
93. “If you commit to giving more time than you have to spend, you will constantly be running from time debt collectors.” – Elizabeth Grace Saunders
94. “You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it ‘done.'” – David Allen
95. “Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
96. “The path to success is to take massive, determined actions.” – Tony Robbins
97. “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” – Japanese Proverb
98. “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” – Dale Carnegie
99. “Use the word PERHAPS to change your negative beliefs to possibilities that invite ACTION and, ultimately, to positive beliefs and probabilities.” – Anita Foley
100. “If you spend time getting ready to be perfect and do not start out to accomplish your dreams, you will find out later that you could have accomplished your dream if you had just acted.” – David DeNotaris
Image credit: Engin Akyurt; Pexels; Thank you!
Deanna Ritchie
Editor-in-Chief at Calendar. Former Editor-in-Chief and writer at Startup Grind. Freelance editor at Entrepreneur.com. Deanna loves to help build startups, and guide them to discover the business value of their online content and social media marketing.