Quotes About Efficiency

The one-way plow would later be cursed as the tool that destroyed the plains because of its efficiency at ripping up grass.

By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else's time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash. How's that for incentive to be effective and efficient?

Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly.

If you spend your time, worth $20-25 per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it's simply a poor use of resources.

I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition." —W.H. Auden

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective - doing less - is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

My goal is to learn things once and use them forever.

Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production; using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

It is possible to become world-class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6-12 months, or even 6-12 weeks.

It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.

Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It's about building a system to replace yourself.

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. —BRUCE LEE

people, even good people, will unknowingly abuse your time to the extent that you let them. Set good rules for all involved to minimize back-and-forth and meaningless communication.

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

Don't save it all for the end. There is every reason not to.

Simple works, complex fails.

How is it possible that all the people in the world need exactly 8 hours to accomplish their work? It isn't. 9–5 is arbitrary.

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate. —DAVE BARRY, Pulitzer Prize–winning American humorist

If you can't define it or act upon it, forget it.

Less Is Not Laziness Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials." —Lin Yutang