Quotes About Productivity

In 1872, the average American farmer fed roughly four other people; now the average farmer feeds about 155 other people.

The metaphor that Romer used to describe the economy to noneconomists was of a well-stocked kitchen waiting for a brilliant chef to exploit it. Everyone in the kitchen starts with more or less the same ingredients, the metaphor ran, but not everyone produces good food. And only a very few people who wander into the kitchen find entirely new ways to combine old ingredients into delightfully tasty recipes. These people were the wealth creators.

Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He was a great believer in exercising his mind and the minds of his workers and felt that without a quota he probably wouldn't have achieved very much. His personal invention quota was a minor invention every ten days and a major invention every six months. To Edison, an idea quota was the difference between eating beefsteak or a plateful of Black Beauty stew.

Set yourself an idea quota for a challenge you are working on, such as five new ideas every day for a week. You'll find the first five are the hardest, but these will quickly trigger other ideas. The more ideas you come up with, the greater your chances of coming up with a winner.

I could write 15,000 words a day and gave myself three days a volume.

Planted, a single corn seed yielded more than 150 fat kernels, often as many as 300, while the return on a seed of wheat was something less than 50:1

coffee helped disperse Europe's alcoholic fog, fostering a heightened alertness and attention to detail, and, as employers soon discovered, dramatically improving productivity.

GMO seed is just the latest chapter in an old story: Farmers eager to increase their yields adopt the latest innovation, only to find that it's the companies selling the innovations who reap the most from the gain in the farmer's productivity.

coffee and tea, which have amply demonstrated their value to capitalism in many ways, not least by making us more efficient workers, are in no danger of prohibition, while psychedelics—which are no more toxic than caffeine and considerably less addictive—have been regarded, at least in the West since the mid-1960s, as a threat to social norms and institutions.

The area I hope we can learn most from Singapore is in the productivity and efficiency of its public servants.

I don't like singing before noon.

In the beginning of the lockdown days, I was very active and motivated. I made sure not to waste a single moment and tried to be organized and disciplined.

It used to be OK to have two or three songs out a year - and those are your singles. Now, they don't want that. They're like, 'OK, I heard that. Next!'

Usually when we finish a game and we're at the end, we're sick of it. We want to put it in the box and be done with it. But with 'Borderlands,' it's actually become a productivity sink at Gearbox, because we're just having fun.

The thing I liked most about Puri Sir is that he was so relaxed on the sets. So everyone else was also relaxed. Since there was no stress, one worked better.

Life is too short to sit around doing nothing.

I usually sit around with the guitar in reach and grab it when I get an idea. Sometimes it lasts five minutes, and sometimes it lasts all day.

I don't really listen to my work. If I have to DJ and I play something, I hear it. But I don't sit quietly and listen to my work; I'm always off to do the next thing.

I like being busy. I couldn't sit around the house all day and do nothing.

There are days when I'll write for 15 minutes and have to give up and move around, and I'll write another paragraph and give up again. On other days I get intensely - focused on the process, sit down at 8 A.M. and won't get up until 8 P.M.

If I'm not doing something or working on something, I literally just sit in the room and think, which I don't think is productive. I won't go outside for days.

When I'm not acting, I'm writing, building an inventory of scripts. Even if they sit on the shelf, I just keep stacking them up.

I have a piano in my office, and sometimes during meetings, I'll sit down and goof on the keyboard a little bit.

It's good to be busy. I prefer that than sitting back and enjoying life.