Quotes About Efficiency

My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.

in Tony's case, free time was the result of productive insights.

traders and salespeople were only manageable when they were unprofitable, in which case they weren't wanted.

as he can carry a library on his device and "optimize" his time between golf outings.

Or, if I have to work, I find it preferable (and less painful) to work intensely for very short hours, then do nothing for the rest of the time (assuming doing nothing is really doing nothing), until I recover completely and look forward to a repetition, rather than being subjected to the tedium of Japanese style low-intensity interminable office hours with sleep deprivation. Main course and dessert are separate.

Under the right market structure, a collection of idiots produces a well-functioning market.

some idiosyncratic behavior on the part of the individual (deemed at first glance "irrational") may be necessary for efficient functioning at the collective level.

get a profession that is "scalable," that is, one in which you are not paid by the hour and thus subject to the limitations of the amount of your labor.

because they cost more to run than the benefits they bring.

when done right, the job allows considerable free time.

activities. It separates those professions in which one can add zeroes of income with no greater labor from those in which one needs to add labor and time (both of which are in limited supply)

I later got some plausible explanation from evolutionary psychology, which claims that such physical manifestations of one's performance in life, just like an animal's dominant condition, can be used for signaling: It makes the winners seem easily visible, which is efficient in mate selection.

I cannot organize my behaviour optimally if my goal is merely to do my best. The assignment is too vague.

A workhorse, not a show horse

The problem was that Citra was very bad at doing things half-fast.

What's the point of three foot pedals?" Citra complained. "People only have two feet.

When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.

there's nothing to discuss there's nothing to remember there's nothing to forget it's sad and it's not sad seems the most sensible thing a person can do is sit with drink in hand as the walls wave their goodbye smiles one comes through it all with a certain amount of efficiency and bravery then leaves some accept the possibility of God to help them get through others take it staight on and to these I drink tonight.

La poesía dice demasiado en demasiado poco tiempo; la prosa dice demasiado poco y se toma demasiado tiempo.

Poetry says too much in too short a time; prose says too little and takes too long.

Poezia spune prea multe într-un timp prea scurt; proza spune prea puÅ£in ÅŸi dureaz? prea mult.

A careful investigator, Young interviewed farmers, recording their methods and the size of their harvests. According to his figures, the average yearly harvest in eastern England from an acre of wheat, barley, and oats was between 1,300 and 1,500 pounds. By contrast, an acre of potatoes yielded more than 25,000 pounds—about eighteen times as much.

Felling a single four-foot tree with an indigenous stone axe would take 115 hours—nearly three weeks of eight-hour days. With a steel axe, workers could topple the same tree in less than three hours.

Unsurprisingly, people with stone implements wanted metal tools as soon as they encountered them—the prospective reduction in workload was staggering