Quotes About Efficiency

People who are desperate are much more effective than people who have time to waste.

Dont write perfect code, write code that works

We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings.

I calculated the total time that humans have waited for web pages to load. It cancels out all the productivity gains of the information age. Sometimes I think the web is a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society.

No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot.

I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero.

What good is something that scales well if it sucks? Why is size the ultimate goal or even a goal at all?

If removing a restriction improves performance or has no impact on performance but improves morale, everyone wins.

a small idea, applied consistently, can have disproportionately large effects.

Plans act as a forcing function against all kinds of stupidity because they demand that important issues be resolved while there is time to consider other options. As Abraham Lincoln said, "If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend four hours sharpening the axe," which I take to mean that smart preparation minimizes work.

Einstein once said, "If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it,

Regarding clarity, most teams in the working world are starving for it. Layers of hierarchy create conflicting goals.

I couldn't help but consider what Washington Roebling, one of the engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge, once wrote: "Man is after all a finite being in capacities and powers of doing actual work. But when it comes to planning, one mind can in a few hours think out enough work to keep a thousand men employed for years."2

Urgent problems were assigned to the developer with the least on his plate, but as these issues accumulated, I worried we'd spend more time doing maintenance than new work. All services require maintenance, but when you spend more time maintaining than growing, something is wrong.

Effective management of open issues is purely about diligence. Someone has to both investigate potential problems and take the time to write them down.

Organizations become bureaucratic as soon as people define their job around a specific rule, or feature, rather than a goal.

the more complex performance reviews become, the less effective they are.

A good sign as a leader is when output is high and meetings are short.

Look for smart ways around a problem or faster ways to resolve them. Make effective use of the people around you instead of assuming you have to do everything yourself.

meetings can be used to stay ahead, flagging issues before they become blockers.

The absence of dedicated quality assurance people made every employee accountable for quality, which is rare if there are many QA people around.

I'd take a great team with bad methods over a lousy team with great methods any day.

little things done well consistently can have big effects—has merit.

critical path is the shortest sequence of work that can complete the project.