Two things are true. First, we each only have only 24 hours each day. Second, time is the one critical resource we all use that we cannot make (or find) more of. If you want to lead a productive, fulfilling life, therefore, it’s essential to make the most of the time you have. Inspiring quotes from people who have learned important lessons through struggle and insight can be useful to you if you are looking for some guidance and encouragement to improve your life.
So here is my little list of time management quotes that will, hopefully, motivate you to take control of your time and get more out of life.
Time management is the use of auditing, planning, and organization techniques to structure your time so that you can complete tasks effectively and efficiently within prescribed blocks of time, increasing productivity and reducing the chances of failure due to the availability of insufficient time.
So, what is the importance of time management? Time management allows you to get more out of the time you have. It allows you to work with more focus so that you get better results. It also relieves stress as you don’t have to worry about looming deadlines that catch you unawares. Most importantly, it allows you to have more free time to spend doing what you enjoy or with your loved ones.
And Now, the Time Management Quotes List
Time Management Quotes Focusing on the Importance of Time
Let’s start with some universally true time management quotes from influential people that focus on the importance of time.
Time is the wisest counselor of all.
Pericles
Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
Rodin
Histories make men wise.
Francis Bacon
Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
Anthony Robbins
Quotes About Being in Control of Your Time
You must realize that whatever your situation, you are in control of your time. It’s very easy to blame others for you feeling like you have too little time to do what you need to do. However, only you can make that change. Hopefully the following time management quotes will help you to take action and reclaim your time.
The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
Michael Altshuler
We all know our money isn’t infinite, yet we end up treating our time and energy and attention as if they are.
Shane Parrish
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
Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.
Alan Lakein
Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating. You are creating your next moment. That is what’s real.
Sara Paddison
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.
Lord Chesterfield
I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.
Golda Meir
Quotes About Perseverance
Effective time management is a marathon, not a sprint. You are not going to see any perceptible results by undertaking a time management regime for a few weeks. You need to persevere with it, even when it’s a real chore to plan, organize and review your actions day after day.
Time will pass and before you know it, your routine will shift so that actively managing your time becomes the new norm. When that happens, you will start to appreciate the value of time management and start to understand why it is such a powerful tool.
Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
Chinese proverb
Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.
Anonymous
The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.
Robert Burton
Quotes for Planning Your Day
Time management start with daily planning. It is essential that you structure your day so that you can assign tasks that are graded according to their urgency and importance to predetermined blocks of time (I call these “time slots”).
Navigating your day without a plan is somewhat akin to taking a journey to an unfamiliar place without a map. You might get to your destination, but it will take longer and be more frustrating. You will also most probably miss all the fun bits.
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
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
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin
A plan is what, a schedule is when. It takes both a plan and a schedule to get things done.
Peter Turla
Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well.
Louisa May Alcott
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln
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
A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.
Confucius
Quotes to Use Time Effectively
Once the planning is done, it’s important to use the time you have set aside for a particular effectively. That means focusing on completing the task without distraction, and pacing yourself so you can complete it within the allotted time. This can take a bit of practice to get right, but once you do, you will see your productivity shots through the roof.
Here are a few time management sayings that can inspire you to use your time more effectively.
If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
Abraham Lincoln
Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.
Zig Ziglar
It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The questions is; what are we busy about?
Henry Davis Thoreau
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
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker
A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
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
The key is in not spending time, but in investing it
Stephen R. Covey
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
William Penn
Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.
Anonymous
Quotes About Not Being Perfect
Perfectionism is important if you are a surgeon or a rocket scientist, but for most of us it’s a result that takes too long to achieve. In an ideal world, it would be nice to achieve perfection on every task, but the pressures of the real world necessitate striving for near perfection instead. Let’s face it, the difference between completing a task to a state 95% perfect is more than acceptable and the time that must be invested to achieve absolute perfection is wasted time.
Note: please ignore this section if you are a pilot, surgeon or engineer ;).
One can find time for everything if one is never in a hurry.
Mikhail Bulgakov
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.
Michael J. Fox
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
Quotes to Stop You Procrastinating
Procrastination is the biggest time thief and it afflicts us all. Hopefully these quotes can help inspire you to resist the temptations that distract us from the tasks we know we have to complete, but we just don’t want to.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.
Wayne Dyer
You may delay, but time will not.
Benjamin Franklin
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
Mother Teresa
Procrastination is the foundation of all disasters
Pandora Poikilos
Procrastination is the thief of time.
Idiom
Quotes to Focus on Priorities
You cannot do everything at once and so you must prioritize the tasks you are required to complete. You do this by assigning a rating to them according to their urgency and importance so that important, urgent tasks can be completed before less important ones.
Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.
Anonymous
The essence of self-discipline is to do the important thing rather than the urgent thing.
Barry Werner
To do two things at once is to do neither.
Publius Syrus
The shorter way to do many things is to only do one thing at a time.
Mozart
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
Quotes About Lost Time
Unfortunately, once time is lost it cannot be retrieved. However, we should not dwell on that loss. Instead, we must learn from it. It is essential to focus on the present and extract as much value from the time you have each day. This small sub-collection of time management quotes should help you get more out of the time you have.
A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
Conclusion
I hope that this list of selected time management quotes will help inspire and guide you to a more time effective and productive life, not only in your professional life, but in your private life as well.
