Quotes About Productivity

Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of our nation.

Ideas? My head is full of them, one after the other, but they serve no purpose there. They must be put down on paper, one after the other.

Crop rotation and contour plowing require no additional capital equipment and would contribute significantly to productivity. By raising grain storage bins a few inches above ground, a large amount of grain spoilage could be avoided. Although such changes may sound trivial to people of advanced nations, the resulting gains in productivity might mean the difference between subsistence and starvation in some poverty-ridden nations.

Even as a kid, I never liked breakfast. I just don't like to eat then. I like to get up and work. I think sticking a whole bunch of carbohydrates in your stomach in the morning is probably the worst way to begin the day.

Because a happy worker is a more productive worker?

Nothing is better than waking up in the morning and being excited to go into work.

Work smarter, not harder

Worry is a way to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we're doing something. (Prayer also makes us feel like we're doing something, and even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than worry.)

While the earth spins, make yourself useful.

I had been working hard at my book; it was one of those rare days of authorship when everything seemed to go right; the words flowed unbidden from my pen, and the time had passed unheeded, so that it was a shock to realise that I had been writing for some six hours.

Those who have the courage to discover and bring forth their genius break through to unparalleled heights of productivity and life satisfaction. Discovering your Zone of Genius is your life's Big Leap.

An organization is only as effective as its processes.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, I tend to do blackout periods where I shut off email and Slack, so there's no way for people to get in touch with me. I put my phone in another room and that's how I get stuff done. - Matt Raible

My theory: if the malls don't open until ten what's the point of being up earlier than that?

WHY DO MEN DELIGHT IN WORK? FUNDAMENTALLY, I SUPPOSE, BECAUSE THERE IS A SENSE OF RELIEF AND PLEASURE IN GETTING SOMETHING DONE—A KIND OF SATISFACTION NOT UNLIKE THAT WHICH A HEN ENJOYS ON LAYING AN EGG. —H. L. Mencken O

Improving daily work is even more important than doing daily work.

Being able to take needless work out of the system is more important than being able to put more work into the system.

Unplanned work is what prevents you from doing it. Like matter and antimatter, in the presence of unplanned work, all planned work ignites with incandescent fury, incinerating everything around it.

Left unchecked, technical debt will ensure that the only work that gets done is unplanned work!

Remember, it goes beyond reducing WIP. Being able to take needless work out of the system is more important than being able to put more work into the system.

By relentless and constant experimentation in their daily work, they were able to continually increase capacity, often without adding any new equipment or hiring more people.

What use is it having all these offshore developers building features if we aren't getting to market any faster? We

What these organizations have in common is a high-trust culture that enables all departments to work together effectively, where all work is transparently prioritized and there is sufficient slack in the system to allow high-priority work to be completed quickly. This is, in part, enabled by automated self-service platforms that build quality into the products everyone is building.

This kind of service-oriented architecture allows small teams to work on smaller and simpler units of development that each team can deploy independently, quickly, and safely. Shoup notes, "Organizations with these types of architectures, such as Google and Amazon, show how it can impact organizational structures, [creating] flexibility and scalability. These are both organizations with tens of thousands of developers, where small teams can still be incredibly productive.