Quotes About Efficiency

The secret is we're on, like, our seventh generation of fulfillment centers. And we have gotten better every time. When I was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift.

Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

A little thing we've begun to do is replace all the traditional light bulbs in our house with fluorescent light bulbs. I introduced a bill to promote compact fluorescent light bulbs. If every family in America changed just one bulb, we could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 7 million tons per year. There are a lot of little things we can do to make a gigantic change.

I was corrected on how to stir ("from the bottom up, circling, cleaning the sides as you go"), which I assume everyone else knows but which I never seemed to get right. I was corrected on my whisk ("limp wrist, figure eight, hitting four points of the bowl as if it had corners"), which I hadn't known and which is both efficient and actually rather flash (you can reach exhilarating speeds).

Growth equity is quite different from other flavors of private equity. In our industry, on one end of the spectrum, there are the global buyout firms that buy a controlling interest in companies by using leverage and they typically focus on operational efficiency.

The bottom line with men is: they feel best about themselves when they are solving problems. Therefore, they spend most of their time doing what they are best at while they attempt to ignore the things which cause them to feel deficient.

My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to and efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1 000 MPG.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things.

Fatal Vision was a very successful book that a lot of people like, but the problem with it is that you could edit out 75% of the book without losing a single fact or insight.

273 Ctrl+Ditto copies the formula without changing the reference.

If it has a staple in it it doesn't get read. Never walk into a presentation without a one-page summary.

You have no idea how destructive and wasteful your infrastructure is because you don't need to use it the way the workforce does... Drive the forklift, use the database, fill out the form, submit it to HR, and find out how long it takes to get a response. Use your own infrastructure.

Most companies are not respectful of each individual's time.

Far too much corporate stupidity is disguised as cost-saving efficiencies.

Future strong strives for simplicity for all: Least amount of individual effort, energy and time to create maximum impact by each person.

something else created modernity, the world that most of us reading this book inhabit. That something was the sudden availability, beginning in the early eighteenth century, of cheap fossil fuel. An exaggeration? One barrel of oil yields as much energy as twenty-five thousand hours of human manual labor

There are people who drove me crazy, but they got the job done. And when I see that person again, I nod my head. Respect.

What's the takeaway here? Being aware that your time is limited can clearly motivate you to make the most of the time you do have.

A quick quick fails fast. But practical knowledge always lasts.