Quotes About Efficiency

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

It just happens I write fast and always have done.

I have proved by actual trial that a letter, that takes an hour to write, takes only about 3 minutes to read!

I can write a song in about an hour if it's a simple country song.

It's amazing, if you know what you want to say, how fast it is to write.

What I take from writers I like is their economy - the ability to use language to very effective ends.

You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

It should cause no surprise that anyone so lazy as myself should be economical to the point of miserliness with everything he writes.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.

I always want to be doing something - going somewhere, doing a project, teaching a class, writing an article. I try to use up my day. You have a limited time on this planet - try to use as much of it as you can for productive purposes.

He did not approve of anarchy (well, he knew he was in lazy doubt about everything; doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction).

How we schedule our days is how we spend our lives.

One of the biggest wastes of time is doing something well that didn't need to be done at all.

Just because we're busy doesn't mean we're being productive. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.

Instead of always worrying about being efficient, I wanted to spend time on exploration, experimentation, digression, and failed attempts that didn't always look productive.

I was always telling myself, "Keep it simple." But as Albert Einstein pointed out, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

In the Strategy of Pairing, I couple two activities, one that I need or want to do, and one that I don't particularly want to do, to get myself to accomplish them both. It's not a reward, it's not a treat, it's just a pairing.

Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.

I started to apply the "one-minute rule"; I didn't postpone any task that could be done in less than one minute.

One study estimated that for every hour of interrupted sleep during the previous night, people wasted 8.4 minutes in online puttering

Actually spending ten minutes clearing off one shelf is better than fantasizing about spending a weekend cleaning out the basement.

It's easier to keep up than to catch up...