Quotes About Efficiency

We're hitting an asymptote, a natural ceiling for how cheaply and how fast we can deliver uninspired work. Becoming more average, more quick, and more cheap is not as productive as it used to be.

Or win by being faster

If we can measure it, we can do it faster. If we can put it in a manual, we can outsource it. If we can outsource it, we can get it cheaper.

6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you're done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done.

120. What's It for? We have a meeting at 4:00 p.m. Okay, what's it for? Well, we always have this meeting . . . So, the "what's-it-for" is: It's easier to maintain the status quo than to risk not having the meeting. What the meeting is for is making sure that the people who like having the meeting aren't upset.

Organizing around average means that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers.

The business model should be such that the employees needed possess the lowest possible level of skill necessary to fulfill the functions for which each is intended.

Nine women can't have a baby in one month, no matter how closely they coordinate their work.

factories are efficient. Starting a factory and filling it with factory workers is a good way to make a profit. By "factory," I don't necessarily mean a place with heavy machinery, greasy floors, and a din. I mean any organization that cranks out a product or a service, does it with measurable output, and tries to reduce costs as it goes. I mean any job where your boss tells you what to do and how to do it.

A graceful person gets things done, but does it in a way you'd be happy to have repeated.

Organizing around the average, then, is too expensive. Organizing around average means that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers.

workers into machines. If we can measure it, we can do it faster. If we can put it in a manual, we can outsource it. If we can outsource it, we can get it cheaper.

War is the least productive of men's pastimes, and the most indulgent.

Concentration Attention Multitasking Boredom Procrastination

Here was no McClellan, begging the boys to allow him to light his cigar on theirs, or inquiring to what regiment that exceedingly fine-marching company belonged.… There was no nonsense, no sentiment; only a plain business man of the republic, there for the one single purpose of getting that command over the river in the shortest time possible.

alone producing over sixty percent more manufactured goods than the whole Confederacy

Any do-gooder can save one life or a dozen by spending x dollars, but that doesn't demonstrate anything unless you've got x dollars multiplied by the total number of lives that need saving. Stopping poverty one victim at a time is like mowing a lawn one blade at a time. The problem grows faster than the cure can be applied, the only people who profit are the agencies who claim to be cutting grass while they're actually applying fertilizer.

The ancient lizard mind lies below the mammalian mind, which lies below a primate mind, which is modified by a mind adapted to language, and since these layers have developed in response to differing evolutionary pressures, they often do not function efficiently together. Human civility tries to control ape dominance, human rationality tries to control mammalian sexuality, human social conscience tries to ameliorate reptilian greed, never with total success.

I live a very balanced life. I am very good at delegating responsibilities.

As nuclear and other technological achievements continue to mount, the normal life span will continue to climb. The hourly productivity of the worker will increase.

At the end of the day, saving money is really about efficiency. You simplify your life, and its overall quality inevitably gets better.

Rush, that most exciting perversion of life, the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should be truly allowed for its doing.

Why is it when you start to meditate you stop at a certain point? Because you're tied to the world, you have holes in your being and you haven't learned to lead an efficient life.

Water always seeks the easiest path, the common level of life.