Quotes About Efficiency

The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their e-mails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.

E-mail response time is the single best predictor of whether employees are satisfied with their boss, according to research by Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist who is now a principal researcher for Microsoft Research. The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their e-mails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.1

99 percent of us cannot multitask.

In a world where anybody can find anything with just a few keystrokes, intermediaries like salespeople are superfluous. They merely muck up the gears of commerce and make transactions slower and more expensive.

In the past, work was defined primarily by putting in time, and secondarily on getting results. We need to flip that model," Ressler told me. "No matter what kind of business you're in, it's time to throw away the tardy slips, time clocks, and outdated industrial-age thinking.

The Power of Breaks, the Promise of Lunch, and the Case for a Modern Siesta

the more they chat and gossip—the more they get done

Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time," Collins wrote in Good to Great. "If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?

For routine tasks, which aren't very interesting and don't demand much creative thinking, rewards can provide a small motivational booster shot without the harmful side effects.

But "as long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance."2

In the past, work was defined primarily by putting in time, and secondarily on getting results. We need to flip that model

HAVE A FEDEX DAY

Instead, they spent considerable time accomplishing almost nothing—until they experienced a surge of activity that always came at "the temporal midpoint" of a project.14

Each team member takes thirty seconds to report on their progress.

sharp-minded analytic capacities peak in the late morning or around noon

Results-only work environment (ROWE): The brainchild of two American consultants, a ROWE is a workplace in which employees don't have schedules. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time or any time. They just have to get their work done.

In the past, work was defined primarily by putting in time, and secondarily on getting results. "We need to flip that model," Ressler told me. "No matter what kind of business you're in, it's time to throw away the tardy slips, time clocks and outdated, industrial-age thinking.

The better strategy is to get compensation right—and then get it out of sight. Effective organizations compensate people in amounts and in ways that allow individuals to mostly forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.

Hoy día sólo llegan las ideas brutalmente simples —afirma—. Se mueven más ligeras, viajan más rápido.»

Set your phone alarm to beep every ninety minutes. Each time you hear the alarm, answer these three questions: What are you doing? On a scale of 1 to 10, how mentally alert do you feel right now? On a scale of 1 to 10, how physically energetic do you feel right now?

injecting the personal into the professional can boost performance and increase quality of care.

High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes. DeskTime never published the data in a peer-reviewed journal, so your mileage may vary. But the evidence is overwhelming that short breaks are effective—and deliver considerable bang for their limited buck. Even "micro-breaks" can be helpful.19

To survive in this age, individuals and organizations must examine what they're doing to earn a living and ask themselves three questions: 1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper? 2. Can a computer do it faster? 3. Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?

Ample research has shown that people working in self-organized teams are more satisfied than those working in inherited teams.