"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. Systems ensure you achieve both."

- Peter Drucker

"Because in reality your time is finite, doing anything requires sacrifice—the sacrifice of all the other things you could have been doing with that stretch of time. If you never stop to ask yourself if the sacrifice is worth it, your days will automatically begin to fill not just with more things, but with more trivial or tedious things."

- Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

"Don’t let other people plan your day. Imagine your ideal day — then make it a reality. Plan what you want to accomplish each day, and don’t let anyone or anything interrupt your plans. Just follow your plan."

- Pat Hiban, 7 Steps to 7 Figures

"Be ruthless about what you ignore. Time, energy, and resources are so precious. Every pretty good, sorta nice, kinda fun thing you abandon is like shedding a weighted vest that lets you move at top speed."

- James Clear

"All that matters in life is doing the work on what really matters. Everything else is just entertainment."

- Craig Ballantyne, The Dark Side of Discipline

"All this noise. All this information. All these inputs. We are afraid of the silence. We are afraid of looking stupid. We are afraid of missing out. We are afraid of being the bad guy who says, ‘Nope, not interested.’ We’d rather make ourselves miserable than make ourselves a priority, than be our best selves. Than be still…and in charge of our own information diet."

- Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen.”

- Henry David Thoreau

“Slow down, be more strategic, and say no more often.”

- Brendon Burchard, High Performance Habits

“The best to-do list sticks to a handful of very specific, actionable, and non-conflicting items. Schedule your number one priority first. Attack it immediately in the morning. Start there and you will win your morning hours and you will own your day.”

- Craig Ballantyne, The Perfect Day Formula

“Productivity is achieved when you plan, organize, set priorities, and concentrate on the most valuable use of your time, all day long.”

- Brian Tracy, Master Your Time, Master Your Life

“If we know our priorities, we can build our routine, scripting out tomorrow today in order to maximize the time and effort spent working towards what matters.”

- Craig Ballantyne, The Perfect Day Formula

“Goal achievement has to do with only two things: Managing where your attention goes, and managing where your effort goes. That’s it. Our job is to continuously reprioritize, reorganize, and optimize those two things.”

- Sharran Srivatsaa

"Clarity Creates Power: When you know your #1 priority, you can channel all your energy toward what matters most."

- Brian Johnson, Areté

“An example of your amazing, but possibly underutilized, ability to control your motivation, not to mention your efficiency, is how you feel right before a vacation. In the time prior to taking a vacation, you're super organized. You edit the things on your to-do list to only the most necessary. You're awesome at managing your time and getting things done. It's almost miraculous how efficient you become. What would happen if you treated each workday as if you had that plane to catch for your vacation?”

- Tim and Julie Harris, Harris Rules

“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.”

- John Carmack

"Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls — family, health, friends, integrity — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered."

- James Patterson, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

"Sometimes it's the first thing you do. Sometimes it's the only thing you do. Regardless, doing the most important thing is always the most important thing."

- Gary Keller & Jay Papasan, The ONE Thing

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Your life goals become the framework for how you prioritize and manage your time.”

- From Success Habits For Dummies by Dirk Zeller

“Will it help you achieve your goals? Great, then do it! If not, let it go.”

- From Mindset, Model and Marketing! by Tom Ferry