Quotes About Efficiency

We don't need bigger government. We need to shrink the size of government.

In fact most of the slick computerized or cam-driven machines just won't do the trick as well as the basics of a barbell, a bench, and squat racks.

During most all of human evolution, it was adaptive to conserve energy by being lazy as circumstances permitted. Energy was a vitally needed resourse and could not be wasted. Today this take-it-easy adaptation may lead us to watch tennis on television when we would be better off playing it. This can only aggravate the effects of excess nutrition. The average office worker would be much more healthy if he or she spent the day digging clams or harvesting fruit in scattered tall trees.

Categories make for efficient communication and statistical recordkeeping. They also satisfy the human lust for making things seem simpler than they are. We have been trying to map the landscape of mental disorders by drawing lines around clusters of symptoms as if they were island, but mental disorders are more like ecosystems...defying crisp boundaries.

The key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have.

Randy Pausch on time management: Here's what I know: Time must be explicitly managed, like money. You can always change your plan, but only if you have one. Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? Develop a good filing system. Rethink the telephone. Delegate. Take a time out. Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.

Engineering isn't about perfect solutions; it's about doing the best you can with limited resources.

If nobody ever worried about what was in other people's heads, we'd all be 33 percent more effective in our lives and our jobs.

As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster.

Time must be explicitly managed, like money.

When we make something hard to use, people get upset. They become so angry that they want to destroy it. We don't want to create things that people will want to destroy

Filing in alphabetical order is better than running around and saying, 'I know it was blue and I was eating something when I had it.

As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster. The same is true in your life outside of your job.

But engineering isn't about perfect solutions; it's about doing the best you can with limited resources.

Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things?

I've also collected techniques for keeping unnecessary calls shorter. If I'm sitting while on the phone, I never put my feet up. In fact, it's better to stand when you're on the phone. You're more apt to speed things along. I also like to have something in view on my desk that I want to do, so I have the urge to wrap things up with the caller.

to recognize that automobiles are there to get you from point A to point B. They are utilitarian devices, not expressions of social status.

When people say they don't have time, it really means they're not sufficiently motivated

You must always work not just within, but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way, the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve. —Pablo Picasso

Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there's an education level that plays into the mix and so if it's inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.

I was fascinated by the simplicity and effectiveness of the system they described that night. Each step in producing the limited menu was stripped down to its essence and accomplished with a minimum of effort.

Besides, the brothers did have some equipment that couldn't be readily copied. They had a specially fabricated aluminum griddle for one thing, and the set-up of all the rest of the equipment was in a very precise, step-saving pattern. Then there was the name. I had a strong intuitive sense that the name McDonald's was exactly right.

For the practices pioneered or perfected by McDonald's under Ray Kroc's leadership have revolutionized an entire food service industry, changed eating habits throughout the world, and raised customer expectations. Who among us is not now less tolerant of slow service, overpriced meals, soggy french fries, or a lack of cleanliness in eating places? Mr.

If a corporation has two executives who think alike, one of them is unnecessary" Reply to a student at a management seminar 1973 when asked if all his managers were required to share his conservative view. (Quoted in John F. Love's book "McDonald's behind the golden arches", p87)