Quotes About Productivity

So the way to express the goal is this? Increase throughput while simultaneously reducing both inventory and operating expense.

Once the somebody is already on the payroll, it doesn't cost us any more to have him be idle. Whether somebody produces parts or waits a few minutes doesn't increase our operating expense. But excess inventory . . . now that ties up a lot of money.

A major constraint here in your system is this machine," says Jonah. "When you make a non-bottleneck do more work than this machine, you are not increasing productivity. On the contrary, you are doing exactly the opposite. You are creating excess inventory, which is against the goal.

With the bottlenecks more productive now, our throughput has gone up and our backlog is declining. But making the bottlenecks more productive has put more demand on the other work centers. If the demand on another work center has gone above one hundred percent, then we've created a new bottleneck.

sit there marveling that we're going to reduce the efficiency of some operations and make the entire plant more productive.

I sit there marveling that we're going to reduce the efficiency of some operations and make the entire plant more productive.

What we know now," I tell him, "is that we shouldn't be looking at each local area and trying to trim it. We should be trying to optimize the whole system. Some resources have to have more capacity than others. The ones at the end of the line should have more than the ones at the beginning—sometimes a lot more. Am I right?

Throughput is the money coming in. Inventory is the money currently inside the system. And operational expense is the money we have to pay out to make throughput happen. One measurement for the incoming money, one for the money still stuck inside, and one for the money going out.

There's value in work you enjoy, or that serves a need. There's no value in work for its own sake.

Anyway, one of the first things you learn in space is not to thrash. If you have nothing constructive to do, the most constructive thing you can do is often nothing at all. In a mindful sense, I mean. Thrashing is the thing that gets people killed. Not sitting still.

Sometimes, laziness was the next best thing to genius.

Knowing what to do doesn't help at all when you have a habit of justifying why today isn't the day to do the work—convincing yourself that tomorrow holds some promise today doesn't.

Really, she was going to have to learn to better organize her time. Maybe she should hire a lifestyle consultant…

Grown-up people seem to be busy by clockwork: even when someone is not ill, when there has been no telegram, they run their unswerving course from object to object, directed by some mysterious inner needle that points all the time to what they must do next. You can only marvel at such misuse of time.

I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.

I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one.

You can't oversleep if you don't make plans to wake up early.

Why does getting ahead always have to involve getting up early?

It's all right, darling. I can't stand people who are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at seven in the morning. Give me a girl who only gets going after ten!

When you fall asleep after a big lunch you're really just saving up energy to work off all the calories later on.

If people had to spend all of every day getting enough food to eat like animals, they wouldn't have time to make aeroplanes or bombs.

more work is accomplished in one day than many diligent scribes could do in a year….

and that was when I learned that work gets done if you simply do it.

Work gets done if you simply do it.