Quotes About Productivity

Deadlines are like a drug for me. I hate and need them.

my experience, few things waste as much time and energy as apportioning blame.

A more recent development in the cognitive field is "positive psychology," which has sought to reorient the discipline away from mental problems to the study of what makes people happy, optimistic, and productive.

Do less, to do more, to earn more.

It's possible to make an organization more efficient without making it better. That's what happens when you drive out slack.

Very successful companies have never struck me as particularly busy; in fact, they are, as a group, rather laid-back. Energy is evident in the workplace, but it's not the energy tinged with fear that comes from being slightly behind on everything.

Count on the best people outperforming the worst by about 10:1. • Count on the best performer being about 2.5 times better than the median performer. • Count on the half that are better-than-median performers outdoing the other half by more than 2:1.

While this [10 to 1] productivity differential among programmers is understandable, there is also a 10 to 1 difference in productivity among software organizations

What I call bankruptcy of inventiveness is often the result of a failure to set aside the resources necessary to let invention happen. The principal resource needed for invention is slack. When companies can't invent, it's usually because their people are too damn busy.

When managers are overworked, they're doing something other than management; the more they allow themselves to be overworked, the less real management gets done.

a manager who is 40 percent used up making operations happen is not viewed as 60 percent reclaimable expense. Rather, he/she is viewed as someone doing leadership 60 percent of the time. If there is an incentive to change this formula, it suggests looking for ways to decrease the time spent running operations to free up more capacity for leading the transformation.

So far, the results confirm the folklore: Programmers seem to be a bit more productive after they've done the estimate themselves, compared to cases in which the manager did it without even consulting them. When the two did the estimating together, the results tended to fall in between.

The most surprising part of the 1985 Jeffery-Lawrence study appeared at the very end, when they investigated the productivity of 24 projects for which no estimates were prepared at all. These projects far outperformed all the others

What I found with depression was that it occurred when I was lying dormant, when I had nothing better to do.

People who say they have a best friend at work are seven times as likely to be engaged in what they're doing. And if they don't have a best friend at work, the odds of being engaged are just 1 in 12.

Anytime that anyone can create some explosive plays, get first downs, we're going to have more plays on offense.

If I'm not scoring, I better do something on the offensive end.

The iPhone calendar isn't bad, but it isn't great, either. It only offers a day view and a month view - it doesn't have a week view, which drives me crazy.

I don't do office work at home.

Office hours are from 12 to 1 with an hour off for lunch.

I probably write best in my office, which is an extra bedroom in my house.

I have a folder in my office with about 400 ideas in it. So it will take me another 40 years to get through those.

The Blackberry is really essential for keeping up on my emails when I'm out of the office, which is a lot.

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.