Productive Habits Quotes

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

You don't get into the mood to create – it's discipline.

The only rule I have is to quit while it’s still hot. Never write yourself out. Always quit when it’s going good. Then it’s easier to take it up again. If you exhaust yourself, then you’ll get into a dead spell and you’ll have trouble with it.

Some habits of ineffectiveness are rooted in our social conditioning toward quick-fix, short-term thinking.

I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio and smoking mangalore ganesh beedies.

It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.

What should I do?" "Throw up in your typewriter every morning." "Yeah." "Clean up every noon.

I don't really ask of myself a given word or page count or number of hours. To work every day, that's my only fetish. And there is a physical quality to it when a novel is thriving.

I'm amazed at how much my writing is improved when I step away from the computer, even in small amounts. If I'm stuck, I vacuum the living room or walk the dog. I'm amazed at what comes out of that... We have to realize that part of the writing life where we're sitting down at the computer is harvesting the crops, but you have to have planted them and watered them and created fertile soil - and that's a life.

When writing, I split my time between my chambers and my satellite office: my neighborhood Chick-fil-A. It offers the word-nerd trifecta: I bring Bose headphones; they provide Wi-Fi and waffle fries.

Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.

There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 per cent of our time.... The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20% of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 per cent more than now.

I don't write all the time. But if I'm writing something, I'll just bang into it every day until it's finished. I write pretty quickly.

If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.

If you can get yourself to read 30 minutes a day, you're going to double your income every year.

I like to work in the morning, usually from 7-12, and still always hope to do more later. At the end of a book, I just work most of the time, but in general, I like to be working nice and early.

The young man who addresses himself in stern earnest to organizing his life-his habits, his associations, his reading, his study, his work-stands far more chance of rising to a position affording him opportunity to exercise his organizing abilities than the fellow who dawdles along without chart or compass, without plan or purpose, without self-improvement and self-discipline.

I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.

I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don't function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.

If you are rushed for time, sow time and you will reap time. Go to church and spend a quiet hour in prayer. You will have more time than ever and your work will get done. Sow time with the poor. Sit and listen to them, give them your time lavishly. You will reap time a hundredfold.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.