Quotes About Efficiency

Any outfit that can't figure out clean toilets and decent theming on its own can't benefit from my advice.

When I was an activist in the 1980s, ninety-eight percent of my time was spent stuffing envelopes and writing addresses on them. The remaining two percent was the time we spent figuring out what to put in the envelopes. Today, we get those envelopes and stamps and address books for free. This is so fantastically, hugely different and weird that we haven't even begun to feel the first tendrils of it.

Computers can control you or they can lighten your work—if you want to be in charge of your machines, you have to learn to write code.

Work gets done in the time available.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.

Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.

When I feel particularly tired at the end of the day, or when irritability proves that my nerves are tired, I know beyond question that it has been an inefficient day both as to quantity and quality.

Don't you know I am just as busy as you are – or, at least, I like to think I am.

Those two priceless abilities: first, the ability to think. Second, the ability to do things in the order of their importance.

Good Working Habit No. 1: Clear Your Desk of All Papers Except Those Relating to the Immediate Problem at Hand.

Dr. Sadler opened up the drawers of his desk. All empty—except for supplies. "Tell me," said the patient, "where do you keep your unfinished business?" "Finished!" said Sadler. "And where do you keep your unanswered mail?" "Answered!" Sadler told him. "My rule is never to lay down a letter until I have answered it. I

measure my accomplishments," said Daniel W. Josselyn, "not by how tired I am at the end of the day, but how tired I am not." He said, "When I feel particularly tired at the end of the day, or when irritability proves that my nerves are tired, I know beyond question that it has been an inefficient day both as to quantity and quality.

Good Working Habit No. 2: Do Things in the Order of Their Importance.

Good Working Habit No. 3. When You Face a Problem, Solve It Then and There if You Have the Facts Necessary to Make a Decision. Don't Keep Putting off Decisions.

Paul Valéry pointed up in this sentence: Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.

for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it's better, it's simpler, and it's at the forefront of technology. That's where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.

never let a passion for the perfect take precedence over pragmatism.

People know how to deal with a desktop intuitively. If you walk into an office, there are papers on the desk. The one on the top is the most important. People know how to switch priority. Part of the reason we model our computers on metaphors like the desktop is that we can leverage this experience people already have.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least

The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year

When shown his office, he was asked what equipment he might need. "A desk or table, a chair, paper and pencils," he replied. "Oh yes, and a large wastebasket, so I can throw away all my mistakes.

Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for past ages."9

His management mantra was "Focus." He eliminated excess product lines and cut extraneous features in the new operating system software that Apple was developing