Quotes About Efficiency

Humans are not machines, and some of their energy during the day will go into discussions or activities unrelated to the common task. Within reason, this "time wasting" is acceptable, but it can become a problem in a team that does not have a really positive attitude to the common task

Work groups and organization come into being because there is a task to be done that is too big for one person

Do you know what Barney's desktop wallpaper at work is? No. And no one ever will, because he saves every file he makes to the desktop.

Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor.

But since the Shanghai Surprise, statisticians show that any move in the S&P is sufficient to explain 40 percent of moves in the yen, and vice versa. As they should have nothing in common, this implies that neither market is being priced efficiently. Instead, these entangled markets are driven by the same investors, using the same flood of speculative money.

Part of what makes a theory elegant is its power to explain much while assuming little.

optimization under constraints," and many Nobel prizes have been awarded in this area. Using the concept of bounded rationality

Why should I want to have a lot of copies of this and that lying around? Nothing but clutter in the office, a temptation to prying eyes, and a waste of good paper.

Simplicity beats complexity

Another huge toll has been taken by taxes. Passively managed index funds are tax-efficient, given the low turnover implicit in the structure of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (and, to an even greater extent, the all-market Wilshire 5000 Index).

I'm speaking here about the classic index fund, one that is broadly diversified, holding all (or almost all) of its share of the $15 trillion capitalization of the U.S. stock market, operating with minimal expenses and without advisory fees, with tiny portfolio turnover, and with high tax efficiency. The index fund simply owns corporate America, buying an interest in each stock in the stock market in proportion to its market capitalization and then holding it forever.

Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.

Why is Old Jack a better general than Moses?" was the question they liked to ask. "Because it took Moses forty years to lead the Israelites through the wilderness," the answer went, "and Old Jack would have double-quicked them through in three days."10

Wi?cej za pomoc? mniej.

Always bring your own logistical hardware such as a spare power cord, an extension strip, and a mini Ethernet hub.

He liked the bow, where it was quiet. If he looked over the edge of the deck, he could just see the bulbous front of the ship where it met the water. For centuries, the bows of ships had been like knives. But not any longer. Wilson pondered the change until he understood. A bulbous prow would raise the bow. This would make the ship more efficient by reducing the impact of the bow-wave. He wondered about the man whose insight it was, and if he'd gotten credit for it.

Era um desses instrumentos de bom tamanho, que seus proprietários governam melhor do que aqueles pesadões e excessivos.

Knowing that time is running down, and that you are working against the clock forces you to work with clarity and urgency. The alternative of working for an unspecified amount of time can lead to an unfocused kind of work, where the mind wanders and we don't apply ourselves as well as we might. Time boxing is a powerful tool, so use it regularly.

Time boxing is an excellent tool for stopping perfectionism in its tracks. It forces us to complete a task to a good standard and no more.

A job, in their view, was a job, and, as with most jobs, you just had to find that perfect balance between doing as little as possible so you didn't get tired, and just enough so that you didn't get fired.

Already we see a trend in our own technological societies towards the fabrication of smaller and smaller machines that consume less and less energy and produce almost no waste. Taken to its logical conclusion, we expect advanced life-forms to be as small as the laws of physics allow.

Any string of symbols that can be given an abbreviated representation is called algorithmically compressible.

I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people's efforts than 100% of my own efforts.

Nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it