Quotes About Productivity

attempting to maximize utilization is a self-defeating process. Optimal utilization can be achieved only by concentrating on flow.

It would be much better to assign work to established teams than to reconstitute teams around projects.

true productivity has to be measured relative to the outcomes of the overall system, not just the software. Just producing a lot of lines of code or function points is irrelevant; the real question is, How much improvement in customer outcomes has the development team generated?

When you try to measure performance, particularly the performance of knowledge workers, you're positively courting dysfunction.

Trying to force a system to work beyond its capacity invariably causes turbulence and slows things down.

You get no writing done at all if you sit at a table with a view. You'd spent the whole time watching the birds or thinking about what you would like to be doing out of doors, instead of flogging yourself to work out of sheer boredom.

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

Plan your work, work your plan.

Busy hands and idle minds have knitted many a sweater; Busy minds and idle hands have knitted many a brow.

Agatha Swanburne - "Do your best before lunch and do your best after lunch. During lunch, have a sandwich.

People within a company can be divided into two groups: those who earn money and those who don't. Only those frontline people who develop, produce, and sell products are earning money for the company. The ideal company would have only one person who does not earn money—the president—leaving the rest of the employees directly involved in revenue-generating activity.

Unemployment diminishes people. Leisure enlarges them.

The time I kill is killing me.

All play and no work make Jack a poor boy.

All play and no work makes Jack a poor boy.

Dream with both eyes open, both ears listening, and both hands working.

Time and effort can get you anything you want in the world. But nothing in the world can get you more time.

We often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn't help anything. The problem, clearly, isn't that we have a shortage of time. It's more that we have an overload of everything else.

Aim not to get more stuff done. Aim to have less stuff to do. Be a work minimalist. Minimalism is about doing more with less. So much of working life seems to be about doing less with more. Activity isn't always the same as achievement.

Don't feel guilty about being idle. More harm is probably done to the world through work than idleness. But perfect your idleness. Make it mindful.

Aim to have less stuff to do.

This was the species whose main excuse for not doing something was 'if only I had more time'. Perfectly valid until you realised they did have more time. Not eternity, granted, but they had tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And the day after the day after tomorrow. In fact I would have to write 'the day after' thirty thousand times before a final 'tomorrow' in order to illustrate the amount of time on a humans hands.

Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction.

How to get out of bed Wake up. Pick up phone. Stare at phone for 72 minutes. Sigh. Get out of bed. Alternatively, once in a while, try skipping stages two to four.