Quotes About Efficiency

Don't pole-vault over mouse truds - by the time you've discussed the many options available to you, the problem itself could have been long behind you had you simply disposed of those rodent droppings with a simple tissue and dumped them into the garbage!

Think small. Change your notion of "thinking big" to "thinking small and getting big things done.

The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.

A popular management term used to describe efficiency is called "working smart." We are told that if we work smart instead of hard, we will be more productive. But if we do work "smart" then we are likely to have idle time, and if we are idle we will likely be thought of as being lazy or worthless.

Give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric telegraph, are to me… signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.

Regardless what you do or what business you're in, time is more often than not your fiercest competitor.

Man is either Viceroy or else he is an animal that claims special rights by virtue of its cunning and the devouring efficiency of teeth sharpened by technological instruments... But if he is Viceroy, then all decay and trouble in the created world that surrounds him is in some measure to be laid to his account

a human on a bicycle is the most efficient traveler among all machines and animals.

The logical response to these converging crises would be to alter our individual and collective behavior in order to stave off disaster. It demands using less energy and raw materials. It means moving more efficiently and moving shorter distances. It means living closer together and sharing more spaces, walls, and vehicles. It means collecting experiences rather than objects.

In a purposeful organization run by good people, there's always more useful work than can be done in an eight-hour workday

This is yet another product of the immensely stupid notion of privatizing the proper functions of government, which is based on the colossally stupid notion that private industry is more honest and more efficient than the public sector, which is itself based on the transcendentally stupid decision by too many states that it is better to light their balls on fire than raise taxes in order to pay for anything anywhere at any time.

Organizational theorists, at least since Burns and Stalker, 1961 and Joan Woodward, 1965 in what came to be called the contingency school, have recognized that centralization is appropriate for organizations with routine tasks, and decentralization for those with nonroutine tasks.

Edwards continues by arguing that all this automation has not reduced the workload of the pilot a great deal; instead, it has increased the operational effectiveness of the system.

workload has become more "bunched," with long periods of inactivity and short bursts of intense activity. Both of these are error-inducing modes of operation.

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick.

Today's computers use transistors. When used in computers, transistors basically function the same way relays do, but (as we'll see) they're much faster and much smaller and much quieter and use much less power and are much cheaper. Building an 8-Bit Adder still requires 144 transistors (more if you replace the ripple carry with a look-ahead carry), but the circuit is microscopic.

You cannot carry water on both shoulders.

They all forget that those who make the least noise do the most work. An engine that expends all its steam in whistling, has nothing left with which to turn wheels. Then let us cultivate silence. All that we can save in noise we gain in power.

The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use.

She must ask herself seriously, Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? And, How should they learn it? If she take the trouble to fiind a definite and thoughtful answer to each of these three queries, she will be in a position to direct her children's studies; and will, at the same time, be surprised to find that three-fourths of the time and labour ordinarily spent by the child at his lessons is lost time and wasted energy.

Man cannot live by incompetence alone.