Quotes About Efficiency

Whether you are designing systems or individual modules, never forget to use the simplest thing that can possibly work.

Professionals are often heroes, but not because they try to be. Professionals become heroes when they get a job done well, on time, and on budget.

When software is done right, it requires a fraction of the human resources to create and maintain. Changes are simple and rapid. Defects are few and far between. Effort is minimized, and functionality and flexibility are maximized.

It is not enough for code to work.

So if you want to go fast, if you want to get done quickly, if you want your code to be easy to write, make it easy to read.

The only way to go fast, is to go well.

Don't Use a Comment When You Can Use a Function or a Variable

The importance of ships employing these optimum tactics is illustrated by the fact that only 29 percent of the dives on ships using the proper tactics, as defined above, were successful whereas 47 percent of the dives were successful on ships using other than these tactics.14

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.

A great many people have come up to me and asked me how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. My answer is 'Don't you wish you knew'

Its results would be, if anything, greater and more subtle; but its very efficiency—a mere handful of rockets, no clever timing required—failed as drama.

The gadget's trivial. It's the network that's useful. Not the gadget but the network.

The feeling that we have endless time to complete our work has an insidious and debilitating effect on our minds. Our attention and thoughts become diffused. Our lack of intensity makes it hard for the brain to jolt into a higher gear. The connections do not occur. For this purpose you must always try to work with deadlines, whether real or manufactured.

His mind, he decided, worked best when he had several different projects at hand, allowing him to build all kinds of connections between them.

The Vulture. Of all the creatures in the jungle, he has it the easiest. The hard work of others becomes his work; their failure to survive becomes his nourishment. Keep an eye on the Vulture - while you are hard at work, he is circling above. Do not fight him, join him.

But it's not what you have that brings you victory, it's how you use it. When you have less, you are naturally more inventive.

The feeling that we have endless time to complete our work has an insidious and debilitating effect on our minds. Our attention and thoughts become diffused. Our lack of intensity makes it hard for the brain to jolt into a higher gear. The connections do not occur. For this purpose you must always try to work with deadlines, whether real or manufactured. Faced with the slenderest amount of time to reach the end, the mind rises to the level you require. Ideas crowd upon one another.

Chekhov] made a vow to himself: no more bowing and apologizing to people; no more complaining and blaming; no more disorderly living and wasting time. The answer to everything was work and love, work and love.

Second, learn to take advantage of other people's work to further your own cause. Time is precious and life is short. If you try to do it all on your own, you run yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out. It is far better to conserve your forces, pounce on the work others have done, and find a way to make it your own.

With the company, we should look deeply at the organization itself—how well people communicate with one another, how quickly and fluidly information is passed along. If people are not communicating, if they are not on the same page, no amount of changes in the product or marketing will improve performance.

Ask more of them. Expect them to work like adults. Quietly alter the spirit with which things are done. Emphasize efficiency: anybody can be efficient (it isn't a question of talent), efficiency breeds success, and success raises morale. Once the spirit and personality of the group start to shift, everything else will fall into place.

You do not have to know all the details. Sometimes you need to delegate—let your subordinates handle the information gathering.

Perfect economy, then, does not mean hoarding your resources. That is not economy but stinginess—deadly in war. Perfect economy means finding a golden mean, a level at which your blows count but do not wear you out.

To think that by doing more you are doing better is a common blunder. It is never good to seem to be trying too hard—it is as if you were covering up some deficiency.