Quotes About Efficiency

Always put first things first.

I believe the logical approach would be to have each governmental agency and department trim its budget by 10 percent — with no exceptions. In each subsequent year, another 10 percent decrease would be required and would continue as long as necessary to bring the budget back into balance.

Over the years we had developed the concept of using existing hardware developed and paid for by other programs to save time and money and reduce the risks of failures in prototype projects.

My years inside the Skunk Works, for example, convinced me of the tremendous value of building prototypes. I am a true believer. The beauty of a prototype is that it can be evaluated and its uses clarified before costly investments for large numbers are made.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

Violence may not be good, my friend, but it has a certain efficiency in the resolution of otherwise insoluble problems.

You don't buy a dog and bark yourself

British Rail is some kind of joke, right? They just pretend to run a railroad? Is that right? Anyway

There was formerly a capacity for lightheartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.

It is impossible for technique to remain long progressive without science, or for science to flourish where there is no freedom of thought. Consequently insistence on doctrinal uniformity, even in matters quite remote from war, is ultimately fatal to military efficiency in a scientific age.

It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times.

It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.

For example multi-tasking, often a point of pride for modern professionals, has been shown to lower our mental efficiency and result in impaired cognitive function that is worse than from smoking marijuana.46 Likewise the constant deluge of digital information to which we are exposed can result in a debilitating form of neural addiction that gradually narrows our scope of meaningful achievement while creating the illusion that we are actually accomplishing more with our time.

the broad rule is that it is easier now than in former days to exert power at a distance from the centre. The effect of this is to increase the intensity of competition between States, and to make victory more absolute, since the resulting increase of size need not impair efficiency. A World State is now a technical possibility, and might be established by a victor in some really serious world-war, or, more probably, by the most powerful of the neutrals.

Back in those less complicated times, there were lots of industries that operated more or less by rote: the old banker's motto, for instance, was "3-6-3": take money in at 3 percent, lend it out at 6 percent, and be on the golf course by 3 P.M.

I don't enjoy politics. I like to get things done, and I like Republicans and Democrats, and that doesn't always work well.

I didn't generate my success by being a prognosticator. I developed my reputation building our businesses by building great businesses and making them more efficient.

When you request a Lyft, 90% of the time, there is someone else going within a half mile of your destination. We've seen this on our platform, so now we're matching up these rides for a discount.

Flying a good airplane doesn't require near as much attention as a motor car.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

We all have a personal recipe for productivity. One person may need six cups of autonomy and just a pinch of collaboration. Another person may require heaps of sociability and noise, with just a teaspoon of occasional privacy.

If all of us would require the same level of performance from ourselves as we expect from government, this city will forever be the city that works.

I am a great believer in the OHIO principle: Only handle it once. When you read an e-mail, decide whether or not to reply to it, and, if you need to reply, do so right then and there. I have found that about 80 percent of all e-mails, whether internal or external, do not require a response.

Most decisions don't require extensive research.