Gretchen Rubin

The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.

Often, the more reliably you perform a task, the less likely it is for someone to notice that you're doing it and to feel grateful and to feel any impulse to help or to take a turn.

The more I examine the issue of clutter, the more effort I put into combating it, because it really does act as a weight.

Take care of difficult calls or emails as quickly as possible. Procrastinating just makes it harder; getting them done gives a big boost of relieved energy.

I love finding - or inventing - ways to categorize people.

When you're doing a job that benefits other people, it's easy to assume that they feel conscious of the fact that you're doing this work - that they should feel grateful, and that they should and do feel guilty about not helping you.