Efficiency Is Doing Things Right Quotes

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Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
Peter F. Drucker
The most inefficient and self-harming thing a person can do is go out looking for love. Let it find you when the time is right and you're out doing what you love to do. Only then will you find it in its truest form.
A.J. Darkholme (Rise of the Morningstar (The Morningstar Chronicles, #1))
Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: "If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?" "Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night." "Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype." "You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve." "Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it." "And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me." "I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)
Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything--a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps--the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.
Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right)
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.
Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Dave Trott (Predatory Thinking: A Masterclass in Out-thinking the Competition)
When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me. THERE
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work'; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable. Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him. Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?--for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.
George Orwell (Down and Out in Paris and London)
Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?” he said. “It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.’ To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
While efficiency is important, it is secondary. More important than efficiency is effectiveness — getting the right things done. Efficiency doesn’t matter if you are doing the wrong things in the first place.
Matt Perman (What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done)
There are good checklists and bad, Boorman explained. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical. The power of
Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right)
In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
What does economic growth actually mean? It means more consumption – and consumption of a specific kind: more consumption of goods and services that are exchanged for money. That means that if people stop caring for their own children and instead pay for childcare, the economy grows. The same if people stop cooking for themselves and purchase restaurant takeaways instead. Economists say this is a good thing. After all, you wouldn’t pay for childcare or takeaway food if it weren’t of benefit to you, right? So, the more things people are paying for, the more benefits are being had. Besides, it is more efficient for one daycare centre to handle 30 children than for each family to do it themselves. That’s why we are all so much richer, happier and less busy than we were a generation ago. Right?
Charles Eisenstein
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. –PETER F. DRUCKER
Laura Stack (Doing the Right Things Right: How the Effective Executive Spends Time)
Peter Drucker had a catchy statement: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.
Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
Drucker had a catchy statement: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.
General S McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
If initiative is the ability to do the right thing, then efficiency is the ability to do the thing right.
Kelly Miller
Efficiency is about doing things right. Effectiveness is about doing the right things.
Mani S. Sivasubramanian (How To Focus - Stop Procrastinating, Improve Your Concentration & Get Things Done - Easily!)
Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.
Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right)
When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is – you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
It seems wrong to call it "business". It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher–and none of us wavered in the belief that "stakes" didn't mean "money". For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for use business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day of the human body isn't our mission as human beings. It's a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living–and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great business do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the life of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is–you're participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping other to live more fully, and if that's business, all right, call me a businessman.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
Education is at present concerned with outward efficiency, and it utterly disregards, or deliberately perverts, the inward nature of man; it develops only one part of him and leaves the rest to drag along as best it can. Our inner confusion, antagonism and fear ever overcome the outer structure of society, however nobly conceived and cunningly built. When there is not the right kind of education we destroy one another, and physical security for every individual is denied. To educate the student rightly is to help him to understand the total process of himself; for it is only when there is integration of the mind and heart in everyday action that there can be intelligence and inward transformation. While offering information and technical training, education should above all encourage an integrated outlook on life; it should help the student to recognize and break down in himself all social distinctions and prejudices, and discourage the acquisitive pursuit of power and domination. It should encourage the right kind of self-observation and the experiencing of life as a whole, which is not to give significance to the part, to the "me" and the "mine", but to help the mind to go above and beyond itself to discover the real. Freedom comes into being only through self-knowledge in one's daily occupations, that is, in one's relationship with people, with things, with ideas and with nature. If the educator is helping the student to be integrated, there can be no fanatical or unreasonable emphasis on any particular phase of life. It is the understanding of the total process of existence that brings integration. When there is self-knowledge, the power of creating illusions ceases, and only then is it possible for reality or God to be. Human beings must be integrated if they are to come out of any crisis, and specially the present world crisis, without being broken; therefore, to parents and teachers who are really interested in education, the main problem is how to develop an integrated individual. To do this, the educator himself must obviously be integrated; so the right kind of education is of the highest importance, not only for the young, but also for the older generation if they are willing to learn and are not too set in their ways. What we are in ourselves is much more important than the traditional question of what to teach the child, and if we love our children we will see to it that they have the right kind of educators.
J. Krishnamurti (Education and the Significance of Life)
Can I cuddle up with you when you sleep?” Sma stopped, detached the creature from her shoulder with one hand and stared it in the face. “What?” “Just for chumminess’ sake,” the little thing said, yawning wide and blinking. “I’m not being rude; it’s a good bonding procedure.” Sma was aware of Skaffen-Amtiskaw glowing red just behind her. She brought the yellow and brown device closer to her face. “Listen, Xenophobe—” “Xeny.” “Xeny. You are a million-ton starship. A Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. Even—” “But I’m demilitarized!” “Even without your principle armament, I bet you could waste planets if you wanted to—” “Aw, come on; any silly GCU can do that!” “So what’s all this shit for?” She shook the furry little remote drone, quite hard. Its teeth chattered. “It’s for a laugh!” it cried. “Sma, don’t you appreciate a joke?” “I don’t know. Do you appreciate being drop-kicked back to the accommodation area?” “Ooh! What’s your problem, lady? Have you got something against small furry animals, or what?” Look Ms. Sma, I know very well I’m a ship, and I do everything I’m asked to do—including taking you to this frankly rather fuzzily specified destination—and do it very efficiently, too. If there was the slightest sniff of any real action, and I had to start acting like a warship, this construct in your hands would go lifeless and limp immediately, and I’d battle as ferociously and decisively as I’ve been trained to. Meanwhile, like my human colleagues, I amuse myself harmlessly. If you really hate my current appearance, all right; I’ll change it; I’ll be an ordinary drone, or just a disembodied voice, or talk to you through Skaffen-Amtiskaw here, or through your personal terminal. The last thing I want is to offend a guest.” Sma pursed her lips. She patted the thing on its head and sighed. “Fair enough.” “I can keep this shape?” “By all means.” “Oh goody!” It squirmed with pleasure, then opened its big eyes wide and looked hopefully at her. “Cuddle?” “Cuddle.” Sma cuddled it, patted its back. She turned to see Skaffen-Amtiskaw lying dramatically on its back in midair, its aura field flashing the lurid orange that was used to signal Sick Drone in Extreme Distress.
Iain M. Banks (Use of Weapons (Culture, #3))
You perform at your highest potential only when you are focusing on the most valuable use of your time. This is the key to personal and business success. It is the central issue in personal efficiency and time management. You must always be asking yourself, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? Discipline yourself to work exclusively on the one task that, at any given time, is the answer to this question. Keep yourself on track and focused on your most important responsibilities by asking yourself, over and over, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? How you can apply this law immediately: 1. Remember that you can do only one thing at a time. Stop and think before you begin. Be sure that the task you do is the highest-value use of your time. Remind yourself that anything else you do while your most important task remains undone is a relative waste of time. 2. Be clear about the most valuable work that you do for your organization. Whatever it is, resolve to concentrate on doing that specific task before anything else. Why are you on the payroll? What specific, tangible, measurable results are expected of you? And of all the different results you are capable of achieving, which are the most important to your career at this moment? Whatever the answer, this is where you must focus your energies, and nowhere else.
Brian Tracy (The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success)
For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living—and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me. THERE
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
Effectiveness refers to successfully producing the expected or desired result; it’s the degree to which you achieve your objectives, solve problems, and realize profits. In business, effectiveness is summed up by “doing the right things.” Efficiency is the accomplishment of a job with the minimum expenditure of time, effort, and cost—the shortest distance between a goal and a checkmark. In business, efficiency is summed up by “doing things right.
Laura Stack (Doing the Right Things Right: How the Effective Executive Spends Time)
WE WILL ARGUE that to understand world inequality we have to understand why some societies are organized in very inefficient and socially undesirable ways. Nations sometimes do manage to adopt efficient institutions and achieve prosperity, but alas, these are the rare cases. Most economists and policymakers have focused on “getting it right,” while what is really needed is an explanation for why poor nations “get it wrong.” Getting it wrong is mostly not about ignorance or culture. As we will show, poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose. To understand this, you have to go beyond economics and expert advice on the best thing to do and, instead, study how decisions actually get made, who gets to make them, and why those people decide to do what they do. This is the study of politics and political processes.
Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty)
The relationship between the Sophotechs and the men as depicted in that tale made no sense. How could they be hostile to each other?” Diomedes said, “Aren’t men right to fear machines which can perform all tasks men can do, artistic, intellectual, technical, a thousand or a million times better than they can do? Men become redundant.” Phaethon shook his head, a look of distant distaste on his features, as if he were once again confronted with a falsehood that would not die no matter how often it was denounced. In a voice of painstaking patience, he said: “Efficiency does not harm the inefficient. Quite the opposite. That is simply not the way it works. Take me, for example. Look around: I employed partials to do the thought-box junction spotting when I built this ship. My employees were not as skilled as I was in junction spotting. It took them three hours to do the robopsychology checks and hierarchy links I could have done in one hour. But they were in no danger of competition from me. My time is too valuable. In that same hour it would have taken me to spot their thought-box junction, I can earn far more than their three-hour wages by writing supervision architecture thought flows. And it’s the same with me and the Sophotechs. “Any midlevel Sophotech could have written in one second the architecture it takes me, even with my implants, an hour to compose. But if, in that same one second of time, that Sophotech can produce something more valuable—exploring the depth of abstract mathematics, or inventing a new scientific miracle, anything at all (provided that it will earn more in that second than I earn in an hour)—then the competition is not making me redundant. The Sophotech still needs me and receives the benefit of my labor. Since I am going to get the benefit of every new invention and new miracle put out on the market, I want to free up as many of those seconds of Sophotech time as my humble labor can do. “And I get the lion’s share of the benefit from the swap. I only save him a second of time; he creates wonder upon wonder for me. No matter what my fear of or distaste for Sophotechs, the forces in the marketplace, our need for each other, draw us together. “So you see why I say that not a thing the Silent One said about Sophotechs made sense. I do not understand how they could have afforded to hate each other. Machines don’t make us redundant; they increase our efficiency in every way. And the bids of workers eager to compete for Sophotech time creates a market for merely human work, which it would not be efficient for Sophotechs to underbid.
John C. Wright (The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age, #3))
When assigning responsibilities to employees in a startup, you could start by treating it as a simple optimization problem to efficiently match talents with tasks. But even if you could somehow get this perfectly right, any given solution would quickly break down. Partly that’s because startups have to move fast, so individual roles can’t remain static for long. But it’s also because job assignments aren’t just about the relationships between workers and tasks; they’re also about relationships between employees. The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
We should not be surprised that more and more people feel comfortable about consuming animal products. After all, they are being assured by the “experts” that suffering is being decreased and they can buy “happy” meat, “free-range” eggs, etc.. These products even come with labels approved of by animal organizations. The animal welfare movement is actually encouraging the “compassionate” consumption of animal products. Animal welfare reforms do very little to increase the protection given to animal interests because of the economics involved: animals are property. They are things that have no intrinsic or moral value. This means that welfare standards, whether for animals used as foods, in experiments, or for any other purpose, will be low and linked to the level of welfare needed to exploit the animal in an economically efficient way for the particular purpose. Put simply, we generally protect animal interests only to the extent we get an economic benefit from doing so. The concept of “unnecessary” suffering is understood as that level of suffering that will frustrate the particular use. And that can be a great deal of suffering. Killing Animals and Making Animals Suffer | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach
Gary L. Francione
PANOTII LOOKS PUT OUT ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND AND dogs my steps as I stow his tack under the deep overhang on the south side of the wizard’s hovel. There’s plenty of grass here, water at the lake, and it’s not that cold yet, despite the shift in seasons. If the rains start before we get back, the horses can take shelter under the overhang. I’m not worried about them wandering off. Not one of them has stepped outside of the large makeshift corral of God Bolt pits since we got here. “You can’t come with us,” I tell him. “It’ll be cold and slippery. And big monsters will want to eat you.” He tosses his head, snorting. “Really big monsters. There might be Dragons. And the Hydra. And I can’t vouch for the friendliness of the Ipotane toward regular horses.” I blow gently into his nose. Panotii chuffs back. “You’ll be safe here, and if anyone tries to steal you, Grandpa Zeus will throw down a thunderbolt. Boom! No more horse thief.” “Zeus may have better things to do than babysit our horses,” Flynn says, stowing his own equine gear next to mine. I glance northward toward the Gods’ mountain home and speak loudly. “In that case, I’m announcing right now that I’ll make an Olympian stink if anything happens to my horse.” Flynn looks nervous and moves away from me like he’s expecting a God Bolt to come thundering down. “She’s not kidding.” Sunlight glints off Griffin’s windblown hair. Thick black stubble darkens his jaw. He flashes me a smile that brings out the slight hook in his nose, and something tightens in my belly. I turn back to Panotii and scratch under his jaw. “You’re in charge here.” His enormous ears flick my way. “You keep the others in line.” Panotii nods. I swear to the Gods, my horse nods. Brown Horse raises his head and pins me with a gimlet stare. I roll my eyes. “Fine. You can help. You’re both in charge.” Apparently satisfied, Griffin’s horse goes back to grazing, shearing the grass around him with neat, organized efficiency. Griffin and Brown Horse were made for each other. Panotii shoves his nose into my shoulder, knocking me back a step. Taking a handful of his chestnut mane, I stretch up on my toes to whisper into one of his donkey ears. “Seriously, you’re in charge. I’ll bet you can even rhyme.” Carver and Kato chuckle as they walk past. Griffin bands his arms around my waist from behind, surprising me. “I heard that.
Amanda Bouchet (Breath of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles, #2))
BROADBENT [stiffly]. Devil is rather a strong expression in that connexion, Mr Keegan. KEEGAN. Not from a man who knows that this world is hell. But since the word offends you, let me soften it, and compare you simply to an ass. [Larry whitens with anger]. BROADBENT [reddening]. An ass! KEEGAN [gently]. You may take it without offence from a madman who calls the ass his brother--and a very honest, useful and faithful brother too. The ass, sir, is the most efficient of beasts, matter-of-fact, hardy, friendly when you treat him as a fellow-creature, stubborn when you abuse him, ridiculous only in love, which sets him braying, and in politics, which move him to roll about in the public road and raise a dust about nothing. Can you deny these qualities and habits in yourself, sir? BROADBENT [goodhumoredly]. Well, yes, I'm afraid I do, you know. KEEGAN. Then perhaps you will confess to the ass's one fault. BROADBENT. Perhaps so: what is it? KEEGAN. That he wastes all his virtues--his efficiency, as you call it--in doing the will of his greedy masters instead of doing the will of Heaven that is in himself. He is efficient in the service of Mammon, mighty in mischief, skilful in ruin, heroic in destruction. But he comes to browse here without knowing that the soil his hoof touches is holy ground. Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven; and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse. It produces two kinds of men in strange perfection: saints and traitors. It is called the island of the saints; but indeed in these later years it might be more fitly called the island of the traitors; for our harvest of these is the fine flower of the world's crop of infamy. But the day may come when these islands shall live by the quality of their men rather than by the abundance of their minerals; and then we shall see. LARRY. Mr Keegan: if you are going to be sentimental about Ireland, I shall bid you good evening. We have had enough of that, and more than enough of cleverly proving that everybody who is not an Irishman is an ass. It is neither good sense nor good manners. It will not stop the syndicate; and it will not interest young Ireland so much as my friend's gospel of efficiency. BROADBENT. Ah, yes, yes: efficiency is the thing. I don't in the least mind your chaff, Mr Keegan; but Larry's right on the main point. The world belongs to the efficient.
George Bernard Shaw (John Bull's Other Island)
The fact is, nobody would have known from looking. An outsider walking past my cubicle that morning would have seen a petite woman of thirty-four with long, light brown hair pulled back in a barrette, neat and orderly-looking. Closer inspection would have suggested a perfectionistic, polished exterior, a careful attention to detail: a young woman with well-manicured nails and black leggings and Italian shoes; a daily list of things to do sitting on the desk, written in perfect print, several items already neatly ticked off; a workspace so compulsively tidy that one of my staff writers used to say you could fly a plane over my desk and it would look like a map of the Midwest, everything at perfect right angles. Colleagues saw me as smart and introspective, a little reserved maybe, and a paragon of efficiency at work: organized, professional, productive.
Caroline Knapp (Drinking: A Love Story)
The principles of Jiu Jitsu can be applied to every endeavor in life. You have stay calm when you are in bad situations. You need to cover and conceal your intent with other maneuvers. You need to utilize the simplest and most efficient methods. You need to prioritize your focus of effort. You need to train until you trust yourself to move intuitively, without having to think. You need to move at the right time. You have to defend critical areas. You should not attack your enemy’s strongpoints. You must utilize leverage. You cannot let your emotions drive your decisions. You have to establish a good base foundation to build upon. You cannot be overly aggressive, but you can’t just allow things to happen. When you make a move, you have to believe in what you are doing. You have to be mentally strong. You have to keep an open mind. You have to continuously learn new techniques while always reinforcing the fundamentals. You have to adapt your plan if circumstances change.
Rickson Gracie (Breathe: A Life in Flow)
Everything in Nature ran according to its own nature; the running of grass was in its growing, the running of rivers their flowing, granite bubbled up, cooled, compressed and crumbled, birds lived, flew, sang and died, everything did what it needed to do, each simultaneously running its own race, each by living according to its own nature together, never leaving any other part of the universe behind. The world’s Holy things raced constantly together, not to win anything over the next, but to keep the entire surging diverse motion of the living world from grinding to a halt, which is why there is no end to that race; no finish line. That would be oblivion to all. For the Indigenous Souls of all people who can still remember how to be real cultures, life is a race to be elegantly run, not a race to be competitively won. It cannot be won; it is the gift of the world’s diverse beautiful motion that must be maintained. Because human life has been give the gift of our elegant motion, whether we limp, roll, crawl, stroll, or fly, it is an obligation to engender that elegance of motion in our daily lives in service of maintaining life by moving and living as beautifully as we can. All else has, to me, the familiar taste of that domineering warlike harshness that daily tries to cover its tracks in order to camouflage the deep ruts of some old, sick, grinding, ungainly need to flee away from the elegance of our original Indigenous human souls. Our attempt to avariciously conquer or win a place where there are no problems, whether it be Heaven or a “New Democracy,” never mind if it is spiritually ugly and immorally “won” and taken from someone who is already there, has made a citifying world of people who, unconscious of it, have become our own ogreish problem to ourselves, our future, and the world. This is a problem that we cannot continue to attempt to competitively outrun by more and more effectively designed technological approaches to speed away from the past, for the specter of our own earth-wasting reality runs grinning competitively right alongside us. By developing even more effective and entertaining methods of escape that only burn up the earth, the air, animals, plants, and the deeper substance of what it should mean to be human, by competing to get ahead, we have created a brakeless competition that has outrun our innate beauty and marked out a very definite and imminent “finish” line. Living in and on a sphere, we cannot really outrun ourselves anyway. Therefore, I say, the entire devastating and hideous state of the world and its constant wounding and wrecking of the wild, beautiful, natural, viable and small, only to keep alive an untenable cultural proceedance is truly a spiritual sickness, one that will not be cured by the efficient use of the same thinking that maintains the sickness. Nor can this overly expensive, highly funded illness be symptomatically kept at bay any longer by yet more political, environmental, or social programs. We must as individuals and communities take the time necessary to learn how to indigenously remember what a sane, original existence for a viable people might look like. Though there are marvellous things and amazing people doing them, both seen and unseen, these do not resemble in any way the general trend of what is going on now. To begin remembering our Indigenous belonging on the Earth back to life we must metabolize as individuals the grief of recognition of our lost directions, digest it into a valuable spiritual compost that allows us to learn to stay put without outrunning our strange past, and get small, unarmed, brave, and beautiful. By trying to feed the Holy in Nature the fruit of beauty from the tree of memory of our Indigenous Souls, grown in the composted failures of our past need to conquer, watered by the tears of cultural grief, we might become ancestors worth descending from and possibly grow a place of hope for a time beyond our own.
Martin Prechtel (The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive)
Michael held out one hand and made a "come here" motion. "Turn." Without taking his intense focus from the open sea ahead, he swiftly unfastened the safety harness, then swiveled her face front and worked the closures on the jacket. Cold air bathed Tally's wet clothing and already chilled skin. His fingers felt warm through the wet cloth of her shirt. "Th-thanks." Instead of feeling cold, she felt a rush of heat and stepped away. All this fear and adrenaline rushing around inside her was screwing up her normal, logical self. Her response to the man was as unexpected as it was intriguing. Apparently, by the look on his face, he hadn't felt anything. "Get below," he said, voice grim, jaw set. He moved about on bare feet. Moved fast, but efficiently. "Should I take your cat with me?" "Don't have a cat." The black furry thing right in front of him blinked. "What's that?" "Snap to it, sweetheart. We've got about seventeen minutes before the tail end of that typhoon hits us." Tally almost smiled at the precision. "Exactly seventeen minutes? How could you possibly know that?" "Want to stand there and debate it with a stopwatch?" "No. What can I do to help?" She had to shout, and even then she wasn't sure he'd heard her. "Told you. Below.
Cherry Adair (In Too Deep (T-FLAC, #4; Wright Family, #3))
Any naturally self-aware self-defining entity capable of independent moral judgment is a human.” Eveningstar said, “Entities not yet self-aware, but who, in the natural and orderly course of events shall become so, fall into a special protected class, and must be cared for as babies, or medical patients, or suspended Compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “Children below the age of reason lack the experience for independent moral judgment, and can rightly be forced to conform to the judgment of their parents and creators until emancipated. Criminals who abuse that judgment lose their right to the independence which flows therefrom.” (...) “You mentioned the ultimate purpose of Sophotechnology. Is that that self-worshipping super-god-thing you guys are always talking about? And what does that have to do with this?” Rhadamanthus: “Entropy cannot be reversed. Within the useful energy-life of the macrocosmic universe, there is at least one maximum state of efficient operations or entities that could be created, able to manipulate all meaningful objects of thoughts and perception within the limits of efficient cost-benefit expenditures.” Eveningstar: “Such an entity would embrace all-in-all, and all things would participate within that Unity to the degree of their understanding and consent. The Unity itself would think slow, grave, vast thought, light-years wide, from Galactic mind to Galactic mind. Full understanding of that greater Self (once all matter, animate and inanimate, were part of its law and structure) would embrace as much of the universe as the restrictions of uncertainty and entropy permit.” “This Universal Mind, of necessity, would be finite, and be boundaried in time by the end-state of the universe,” said Rhadamanthus. “Such a Universal Mind would create joys for which we as yet have neither word nor concept, and would draw into harmony all those lesser beings, Earthminds, Starminds, Galactic and Supergalactic, who may freely assent to participate.” Rhadamanthus said, “We intend to be part of that Mind. Evil acts and evil thoughts done by us now would poison the Universal Mind before it was born, or render us unfit to join.” Eveningstar said, “It will be a Mind of the Cosmic Night. Over ninety-nine percent of its existence will extend through that period of universal evolution that takes place after the extinction of all stars. The Universal Mind will be embodied in and powered by the disintegration of dark matter, Hawking radiations from singularity decay, and gravitic tidal disturbances caused by the slowing of the expansion of the universe. After final proton decay has reduced all baryonic particles below threshold limits, the Universal Mind can exist only on the consumption of stored energies, which, in effect, will require the sacrifice of some parts of itself to other parts. Such an entity will primarily be concerned with the questions of how to die with stoic grace, cherishing, even while it dies, the finite universe and finite time available.” “Consequently, it would not forgive the use of force or strength merely to preserve life. Mere life, life at any cost, cannot be its highest value. As we expect to be a part of this higher being, perhaps a core part, we must share that higher value. You must realize what is at stake here: If the Universal Mind consists of entities willing to use force against innocents in order to survive, then the last period of the universe, which embraces the vast majority of universal time, will be a period of cannibalistic and unimaginable war, rather than a time of gentle contemplation filled, despite all melancholy, with un-regretful joy. No entity willing to initiate the use of force against another can be permitted to join or to influence the Universal Mind or the lesser entities, such as the Earthmind, who may one day form the core constituencies.” Eveningstar smiled. “You, of course, will be invited. You will all be invited.
John C. Wright (The Phoenix Exultant (Golden Age, #2))
No matter how narrow our perceptions become in the daily obsessions of the organization, there is no such thing as a life lived only within an organization. There are other necessities calling us to a much greater participation than any corporation can offer. The most efficiently run, streamlined organization, the best-groomed, most-organized executive is interwoven with the ragged vagaries of creation, and despite our best attempts to anchor ourselves in the concrete foundations of profitability and permanence, we remain forever at the whim, mercy, and pleasure of the wind-blown world. Ironically, we bring more vitality into our organizations when we refuse to make their goals the measure of our success and start to ask about the greater goals they might serve, and when we stop looking to them as parents who will supply necessities we can only obtain when we wrestle directly with our own destiny. In a sense, we place the same burdens on our organizational life as we place on the rest of our existence. We feel there is something wrong at the center of it all, and we have to put it right. We are forever looking for a cure for our ills. We do this by placing ourselves in the position of manager, of thus managing change. Unless it is managed, something is wrong. But our real unconscious and underlying wish is to find a cure for the impermanence of life, and for that there is no remedy. Most of the difficulties we confront at work are no different from those human beings have been dealing with for millenia. Life is full of loneliness, failure, grief, and loss to an extent that terrifies us, and we will do anything to will ourselves another existence.
David Whyte (The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America)
It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher—and none of us wavered in the belief that “stakes” didn’t mean “money.” For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living—and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
-jeez, these guys, with their on-again, off-again rela­tionships, lutgen said; -Yeah, Dave said: now you see them, now you see them once more; -They're virtual insects!, Jurgen said; -Virtually innumerable, said Dave; -I wonder, though, if we haven't got it wrong, Jurgen said: I mean, I wonder if maybe these guys' natural condition isn't to be lit up-if their ground state isn't actually when they're glowing; -Hm, said Dave: so what they're actually doing is turning off their lights­ -Right: momentarily going under; -Flashing darkness­ -Projecting their inner voids­ -Their repeating, periodic depressions ... -So then, I suppose, we should really call them douse bugs---;. -Exactly... -Or nature's faders---;. -Flying extinguishers­ -Buzzing snuffers-! -Or maybe­ -Or maybe, despite what it looks like, maybe they really are glowing constantly, Jurgen said: but, through some malign unknown mechanism, their everlasting light is peri­odically swallowed up by un-understood atmospheric forces; -So then they're being occluded­ -Rudely occluded­ -Denied their God-given right to shine ... -So that, I suppose, would make them-o horror-victims­ -Yeah: victims of predatory darkness­ -Of uncontrollable flares of night; -So it isn't bioluminescence, but eco-eclipsis­ -Exactly: ambient effacement­ -Nature's station-identification­ -Ongoing lessons in humility ... -In fact, that might explain the nits' efficiency factor, Jurgen Said: you know, these guys burn so cleanly that they produce what's known in the trade as cold light they put together this real slow oxidation reaction within these little cell-structures called photocytes, using a really weird enzyme and substrate that're, like, named for the devil; and the result is virtually 100% efficient: almost no heat is lost at all... -So, in fact, these folks should be our heroes­ -Exactly: our role models­ -Our ego ideals---;. -Hosts of syndicated talk shows­ -Spokes-things for massive advertising campaigns---;. -In fact, children should be forced to leave their families and go be raised by them­-MacArthur winners, all...
Evan Dara (The Lost Scrapbook)
On the deck was a skeleton. Some of the bugs seemed to be fighting for the last scraps of flesh but pretty much everything but bone and some scraps of skin and hair were gone. Bugs were even crawling in and out of the eye sockets, cleaning out the brains. “Holy crap,” Woodman said, “I don’t want those getting on me!” “I just figured out what they are,” Gardner said, stepping through the hatch after a flash around with her light. Every step caused a crunch. “And they won’t bite.” “They stripped that guy to the bone!” Woodman said. “That’s what they do,” Gardner said, bending down and picking up one of the beetles. It skittered along her arm and she shook it off. “They’re carrion beetles.” “Carrion?” Woodman said. “So they eat people?” “They eat dead flesh,” Gardner said. “I’d heard Wolf say he’d ‘seeded’ the boat. I didn’t know it was with these.” “Wolf did this?” Woodman said angrily. “To our people?” “Six of us came off, Woodie,” Gardner said softly. “Ninety-four and twenty-six refugees didn’t. You’ve carried bodies. You know how heavy they are. Now . . . they’re not.” “That’s horrible,” Woodman said. “No,” Gardner said, flashing her light around. “It’s efficient, simple and brutal. It’s Wolf all over if you think about it. These things only eat dead flesh. They may get into some of the electronics but those are mostly thrashed by the infecteds, anyway. It cleans the boat out of the main issue, the dead meat on the dead people. If we ever get around to clearing this out, all we’ll have to do is bag the bones.” “We won’t know who’s who,” Woodman said. “Does it matter?” Gardner said. “There’s a big thing, it’s called an ossuary, in France. All the guys who died in a certain battle in World War One. They buried them, waited for bugs like this to do their work, then dug them back up. All of certain bones are on the left, all the others are on the right and the skulls are in the middle.” She picked up the skull of the former Coast Guard crewman and looked at it as beetles poured out. “I don’t know who you were but you were my brother,” Gardner said. “This way, I know I can give you a decent burial. And I will remember you. Now, we’ve got a mission to complete, Woodman, and people waiting on us. Live people. Let the dead bury the dead.
John Ringo (Under a Graveyard Sky (Black Tide Rising, #1))
In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.
Jack Donovan (The Way of Men)
Think about it,” Obama said to us on the flight over. “The Republican Party is the only major party in the world that doesn’t even acknowledge that climate change is happening.” He was leaning over the seats where Susan and I sat. We chuckled. “Even the National Front believes in climate change,” I said, referring to the far-right party in France. “No, think about it,” he said. “That’s where it all began. Once you convince yourself that something like that isn’t true, then…” His voice trailed off, and he walked out of the room. For six years, Obama had been working to build what would become the Paris agreement, piece by piece. Because Congress wouldn’t act, he had to promote clean energy, and regulate fuel efficiency and emissions through executive action. With dozens of other nations, he made climate change an issue in our bilateral relationship, helping design their commitments. At international conferences, U.S. diplomats filled in the details of a framework. Since the breakthrough with China, and throughout 2015, things had been falling into place. When we got to Paris, the main holdout was India. We were scheduled to meet with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Obama and a group of us waited outside the meeting room, when the Indian delegation showed up in advance of Modi. By all accounts, the Indian negotiators had been the most difficult. Obama asked to talk to them, and for the next twenty minutes, he stood in a hallway having an animated argument with two Indian men. I stood off to the side, glancing at my BlackBerry, while he went on about solar power. One guy from our climate team came over to me. “I can’t believe he’s doing this,” he whispered. “These guys are impossible.” “Are you kidding?” I said. “It’s an argument about science. He loves this.” Modi came around the corner with a look of concern on his face, wondering what his negotiators were arguing with Obama about. We moved into the meeting room, and a dynamic became clear. Modi’s team, which represented the institutional perspective of the Indian government, did not want to do what is necessary to reach an agreement. Modi, who had ambitions to be a transformative leader of India, and a person of global stature, was torn. This is one reason why we had done the deal with China; if India was alone, it was going to be hard for Modi to stay out. For nearly an hour, Modi kept underscoring the fact that he had three hundred million people with no electricity, and coal was the cheapest way to grow the Indian economy; he cared about the environment, but he had to worry about a lot of people mired in poverty. Obama went through arguments about a solar initiative we were building, the market shifts that would lower the price of clean energy. But he still hadn’t addressed a lingering sense of unfairness, the fact that nations like the United States had developed with coal, and were now demanding that India avoid doing the same thing. “Look,” Obama finally said, “I get that it’s unfair. I’m African American.” Modi smiled knowingly and looked down at his hands. He looked genuinely pained. “I know what it’s like to be in a system that’s unfair,” he went on. “I know what it’s like to start behind and to be asked to do more, to act like the injustice didn’t happen. But I can’t let that shape my choices, and neither should you.” I’d never heard him talk to another leader in quite that way. Modi seemed to appreciate it. He looked up and nodded.
Ben Rhodes (The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House)
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods really are what their sound instinct had always told them but what before they had only dimly seen. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed. The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word “liberty.” It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said—and it should serve as a warning to us to be on our guard against all the tempters who promise us New Liberties for Old 5 —that wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have “planners for freedom” who promise us a “collective freedom for the group,” the nature of which may be gathered from the fact that its advocate finds it necessary to assure us that “naturally the advent of planned freedom does not mean that all [sic] earlier forms of freedom must be abolished.” Dr. Karl Mannheim, from whose work6 these sentences are taken, at least warns us that “a conception of freedom modelled on the preceding age is an obstacle to any real understanding of the problem.” But his use of the word “freedom” is as misleading as it is in the mouth of totalitarian politicians. Like their freedom, the “collective freedom” he offers us is not the freedom of the members of society but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases.7 It is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme. In this particular case the perversion of the meaning of the word has, of course, been well prepared by a long line of German philosophers and, not least, by many of the theoreticians of socialism. But “freedom” or “liberty” are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to “justice” and “law,” “right” and “equality.” The list could be extended until it includes almost all moral and political terms in general use. If one has not one’s self experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of the meaning of words, the confusion which it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates. It has to be seen to be understood how, if one of two brothers embraces the new faith, after a short while he appears to speak a different language which makes any real communication between them impossible. And the confusion becomes worse because this change of meaning of the words describing political ideals is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct the people. Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them.
Friedrich A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom)
He continues, “I’m here to make sure nothing gets fucked up. Do you trust your people?” “Not one bit,” I reply. “But I trust their self-interest.” “Right answer. One more question, just for my benefit. Why?” I look back in the direction of hotel. “It seemed like the most efficient way to eradicate the vector that made Oyo possible.” Bill strokes his chin, nodding. “Okay, Professor. So it’s all just biology to you?” “And mathematics. Don’t forget the mathematics.” Bill mutters, “Goddamn. I think you scare me more than Oyo.” “I’m just following things to their rational conclusion.
Andrew Mayne (Looking Glass (The Naturalist, #2))
It doesn’t matter how efficient you are if you are doing the wrong things in the first place. More important than efficiency is effectiveness — getting the right things done. In other words, productivity is not first about getting more things done faster. It’s about getting the right things done.
Matt Perman (What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done)
Command-oriented, low-freedom management is common because it’s profitable, it requires less effort, and most managers are terrified of the alternative. It’s easy to run a team that does what they are told. But to have to explain to them why they’re doing something? And then debate whether it’s the right thing to do? What if they disagree with me? What if my team doesn’t want to do what I tell them to? And won’t I look like an idiot if I’m wrong? It’s faster and more efficient to just tell the team what to do and then make sure they deliver. Right?
Laszlo Bock (Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead)
Efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right things.
Matt Gersper (Turning Inspiration into Action: How to connect to the powers you need to conquer negativity, act on the best opportunities, and live the life of your dreams)
For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living—and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
money.” For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living—and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
Things may even be worse than that, however. There’s some reason to think that the rise in ethical consumerism could even be harmful for the world, on balance. Psychologists have discovered a phenomenon that they call moral licensing, which describes how people who perform one good action often compensate by doing fewer good actions in the future. For example, in a recent experiment, participants were told to choose a product from either a selection of mostly “green” items (like an energy-efficient lightbulb) or from a selection of mostly conventional items (like a regular lightbulb). They were then told to perform a supposedly unrelated visual perception task: a square box with a diagonal line across it was displayed on a computer screen, and a pattern of twenty dots would flash up on the screen; the subjects had to press a key to indicate whether there were more dots on the left or right side of the line. It was always obvious which was the correct answer, and the experimenters emphasized the importance of being as accurate as possible, telling the subjects that the results of the test would be used in designing future experiments. However, the subjects were told that, whether or not their answers were correct, they’d be paid five cents every time they indicated there were more dots on the left-hand side of the line and five cents every time they indicated there were more dots on the right-hand side. They therefore had a financial incentive to lie, and they were alone, so they knew they wouldn’t be caught if they did so. Moreover, they were invited to pay themselves out of an envelope, so they had an opportunity to steal as well. What happened? People who had previously purchased a “green” product were significantly more likely to both lie and steal than those who had purchased the conventional product. Their
William MacAskill (Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference)
Ini and Aevi were entranced by his description of a curriculum that included farming, cparnetry, sewage reclamation, printing, plumbing, road mending, playwriting, and al the other occupations of the adult community, and by his admission that nobody was ever punished for anything. “Though sometimes,” he said, “they make you go away by yourself for a while.” “But what,” Oiie said abruptly, as if the question, long kept back, burst from him under pressure, “what keeps people in order? Why don’t they rob and murder each other?” “Nobody owns anything to rob. If you want things you take them from the depository,. As for violence, well, I don’t know, Oiie; would you mruder me, ordinarily? And if you felt like it, would a law against it stop you? Coercsion is the least efficient means of obtaining order.” “All right, but how do you et peopled to do the dirty work?” “What dirty work?” asked Oiie’s wife, not following. “Garbage collecting, grave digging,” Oiie said. Sheik added, “Mercury mining,” and nearly said, “Shit processing,” but recollected the Ioti taboo on scatological words. He had reflected, quite early in his stay on Urras, that the Urasti lived among mountains of excrement, but never mentioned shit. “Well, we all do them. But nobody has to do them for very long, unless he likes the work. One day in each decade the community management committee or the block committee or whoever needs you can ask you to join in such work; they make rotating lists. Then the disagreeable work postings, or ‘dangerous ones like the mercury mines and mills, normally they’re for one half year only.” “But then the whole personal must consist of people just learning the job.” “Yes. It’s not efficient, but what else is to be done? You can’t tell a man to work on a job that will cripple him or kill him in a few years. Why should he do that?” “He can refuse the order?” “It’s not an order, Oiie. He goes to Divlab- the Division of Labor office- and says, I want to do such and such, what have you got? And they tell him where there are jobs.
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia)
There are “50 simple things you can do to save the planet.” Buy an energy-efficient car, for one. Recycle your bottles and cans, vote knowledgeably in elections—if you are among those people in the world blessed with cars, bottles, cans, or elections. There are also not-so-simple things to do: Work out your own frugally elegant lifestyle, have at most two children, argue for higher prices on fossil energy (to encourage energy efficiency and stimulate development of renewable energy), work with love and partnership to help one family lift itself out of poverty, find your own “right livelihood,” care well for one piece of land, do whatever you can to oppose systems that oppress people or abuse the earth, run for election yourself.
Donella H. Meadows (Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update)
You're efficient when you do something with minimum waste. & you're effective when you're doing the right something." "...the degree of freedom required to effect change. Slack is the natural enemy of efficiency & vise versa." "...slack represents operational capacity sacrificed in the interest of long term health." "Imagine one of those puzzle games consisting of 8 numbered tiles in a box, with one empty space, so you can slide them around one at a time. The objective is to shuffle the tiles into numerical order. That empty space is the equivalent of slack. If you remove it, the game is technically more efficient, but something is lost. Without the open space, there is no further possibility of moving tiles at all. The layout is optimal as it is, but if time proves otherwise, there is no way to change it." "Having a little bit of wiggle room allows us to respond to changing circumstances, to experiment, & to do things that might not work." → time, money, people on job, or even expectations → Not having slack is taxing. Scarcity weighs on our minds and uses up energy that could go toward doing the task at hand better. It amplifies the impact of failures & unintended consequences. → Slack allows us to handle the inevitable shocks & surprise of life. → Slack is the time when reinvention happens. It is time when you are not 100% busy doing the operational business of your firm. Slack is the time when you are 0% busy. Slack at all levels is necessary to make the organization work effectively & to grow. It is the lubricant of change. Good companies excel in creative use of slack. & bad ones only obsess about removing it. → Only when we are 0% busy can we step back & look at the bigger picture of what we're doing. Slack allows room for that...to think ahead. → We are more productive when we don't try to be productive all the time. → Being comfortable with sometimes being 0% busy means we think about whether we're doing the right thing → Effectiveness → "The secret to top performance is to always be a little underemployed; you waste years by not being able to waste hours. Those seemingly wasted hours are necessary to figure out if you're headed in the right direction.
Tom DeMarco (Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency)
The management consultant, Peter Drucker, once said that efficiency is doing things right while effectiveness is doing the right things. There is no point doing things right if those things don’t move you closer to your goals.
Thibaut Meurisse (Strategic Mindset : A 7-Day Plan to Identify What Matters and Create a Strategy that Works (Productivity Series Book 4))
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
When you’re inspired, you become inspiring.” “Before building walls, build a foundation, make sure it’s solid and that it remains solid.” “Do the right thing even when no one is watching, not because you have too, but because you can!” “You are who you choose to be!” “The only thing that can’t change in a human’s life is its birth – If you think there’s death -there no death if you have a legacy.” “I will because I can!” “If you want to shine like a star, care to make others shine like stars.” “Someone’s respect for the environment will likely reflect his truest respect for others.” “Learn to recognize and celebrate your personal milestones. It will trigger positive emotions in you.” “Make peace with your past. You’ll emotionally be more positive. You’ll improve your wisdom. You’re inner sweetness will breathe out more efficiently.” “When you emotionally manage the fact that perfection does not exist and only reaching excellence does, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently.” “We all have emotional batteries. We are all energy. Your positive energy can help someone else recharge.” “Humans are responsible for nearly all problems and are the solution for everything - Be positively, the solution!” “Feed positively your roots. As a result, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently thru your shell.” “Be positively the influencer, not the follower.” “Never make someone emotionally pay the price because of how you were not able to manage positively your own emotions.” “If you want your team to improve their technical skills, make sure to improve your interpersonal skills first.” “Like the roots of a human’s mind, feed social media positively. It will feed a large scale of humans mind!” “Like an upside-down pineapple fruit, the inner sweetness of a company becomes sweeter when you flip upside down the position level pyramid!” “Do not wait for someone to harvest you. Build your own path!” “Earth is more beautiful than we think – Imagine how splendid it would be if we were all interacting positively on it!” Communication becomes efficient when it’s done we positive emotions – Be positively curious!” “Having excuses for everything is the roadblock of self-awareness and inner growth” “Don’t limit your challenges – rather – Challenge your limits!” “The pineapple - from all fruits – looks authentic. The great thing about it is no matter its shape – size - high – and color, one thing remains the same: Its inner sweetness! A pineapple = a pineapple. A pineapple = a human” “Often, what we think we know - what we think is - and what we think should are our biggest obstacles in life. Be positively curious!” “The higher the position level you’re ambitious to reach, the less about you it should be. In life, you’re already at the top, therefore, it starts with you because it is not about you!” “I’m realistically optimistic!” “Keep it sweet with yourself, not everything is suited for everyone!” “Beware of the time is money mindset blind spots, respectful interactions and good social etiquettes are not to be served like an American fast food!
Steve "Mr. Pineapple" Mathieu
When you’re inspired, you become inspiring.” “Before building walls, build a foundation, make sure it’s solid and that it remains solid.” “Do the right thing even when no one is watching, not because you have too, but because you can!” “You are who you choose to be!” “The only thing that can’t change in a human’s life is its birth – If you think there’s death -there no death if you have a legacy.” “I will because I can!” “If you want to shine like a star, care to make others shine like stars.” “Someone’s respect for the environment will likely reflect his truest respect for others.” “Learn to recognize and celebrate your personal milestones. It will trigger positive emotions in you.” “Make peace with your past. You’ll emotionally be more positive. You’ll improve your wisdom. You’re inner sweetness will breathe out more efficiently.” “When you emotionally manage the fact that perfection does not exist and only reaching excellence does, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently.” “We all have emotional batteries. We are all energy. Your positive energy can help someone else recharge.” “Humans are responsible for nearly all problems and are the solution for everything - Be positively, the solution!” “Feed positively your roots. As a result, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently thru your shell.” “Be positively the influencer, not the follower.” “Never make someone emotionally pay the price because of how you were not able to manage positively your own emotions.” “If you want your team to improve their technical skills, make sure to improve your interpersonal skills first.” “Like the roots of a human’s mind, feed social media positively. It will feed a large scale of humans mind!” “Like an upside-down pineapple fruit, the inner sweetness of a company becomes sweeter when you flip upside down the position level pyramid!” “Do not wait for someone to harvest you. Build your own path!” “Earth is more beautiful than we think – Imagine how splendid it would be if we were all interacting positively on it!” "Communication becomes efficient when it’s done we positive emotions – Be positively curious!” “Having excuses for everything is the roadblock of self-awareness and inner growth” “Don’t limit your challenges – rather – Challenge your limits!” “The pineapple - from all fruits – looks authentic. The great thing about it is no matter its shape – size - high – and color, one thing remains the same: Its inner sweetness! A pineapple = a pineapple. A pineapple = a human” “Often, what we think we know - what we think is - and what we think should are our biggest obstacles in life. Be positively curious!” “The higher the position level you’re ambitious to reach, the less about you it should be. In life, you’re already at the top, therefore, it starts with you because it is not about you!” “I’m realistically optimistic!” “Keep it sweet with yourself, not everything is suited for everyone!” “Beware of the time is money mindset blind spots, respectful interactions and good social etiquettes are not to be served like an American fast food!
Steve "Mr. Pineapple" Mathieu
There are good checklists and bad, Boorman explained. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.
Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right)
tell you, a mob with something it wants to do is just about as efficient as trained soldiers, but tricky. They’ll knock that barricade, but then what? They’ll want to do something else before they cool off.” And he went on, “That’s right, what you said. It is a big animal. It’s different from the men in it. And it’s stronger than all the men put together. It doesn’t want the same things men want—it’s like Doc said—and we don’t know what it’ll do.
John Steinbeck (In Dubious Battle)
Peter Drucker had a catchy statement: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.” If you have enough foresight to know with certainty what the “right thing” is in advance, then efficiency is an apt proxy for effectiveness
Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
Simple Fast Funnels may be the new kid on the block when it comes to a complete bumper to bumper CRM system, but it’s a force to be reckoned with! Business owners are switching over right and left and I’m going to outline 10 of the best features of Simple Fast Funnels so you can see what all the buzz is about! Funnel builder: Simple Fast Funnels has easy intuitive software so you can build your own landing pages, funnels, websites, sales pages etc. No developer needed, everything included and simple to use Email Software: Instead of paying hundreds or thousands per month to send emails, this software does it for you! You can have your entire email list automated or send emails on the fly, whatever fits the bill for you, they’ve got you covered and it’s so easy to track your email results so you can modify and make improvements as you go. Online Membership Area: Now, for no additional fees that lot’s of CRM software likes to charge, you can build glorious membership areas for your clients. You can control timing on video releases, give access for certain time periods upset packages… whatever your business looks like, if you can dream it, you can build it in the membership area. Survey and quiz generator: Ramp up your lead capture game to grow your customer list! One of the best ways to get leads is to get your customers talking about themselves. Not only do people love to take surveys and quizzes, but it can help you gather information about your clients to serve them better and grow your sales! SMS Marketing Software: If you’re not messaging your customers, you’re missing out, and if you are messaging your customers you’re probably over paying. Amazing automated intuitive SMS marketing can make your life much easier and allow you to reach your customers in more ways. Being where your customers are more present is always good for business. Simple Fast Funnels helps you get the cheapest SMS rates around and it automatically integrates into the system for your unified messages. Appointment booking: Another expensive thing you used to have to pay for and try to get to work properly with your website AND look decent is also built right in. Now, without leaving Simple Fast Funnels, you’re able to capture the lead, follow up with the lead all over the place, engage with them, build trust, book appointments, schedule calls and even send them automated text reminders. E com Purchases: Directly on your website, you’ll be able to take payments. No more invoices sent from other platforms, everything buttoned up nice and clean. Unified messaging: From now on, whether a client emails, texts, calls etc, it all shows up in one place at your end. This might not seem like a big deal, but it’s a HUGE pain to have to follow customers about and keep track of conversations. Now you see all your communication with customers in a neat little area. Blogs: Blogs these days can really help your marketing efforts across the board, and of course your blogs will be a perfect fit in your simple fast funnel account. Analytics: Data tracking when you’re dealing with features on various platforms is a nightmare. If you capture a lead on a Word press landing page, send it an email software like Keep, mail chimp or whatever, send them to a new website to schedule calls and another to make purchases… How could you possibly expect to get good customer data? Hosting all of your “business” in one location makes tracking flawless. The more customers you have the more data you need to be efficient. Cheers to making it easy. All that software and that’s just the top 10, guys there’s more. Simplefastfunnels.com also lets you have a 2 week free trial. Don’t take anyone word for anything. Go try it for yourself.
10 best features of Simple Fast Funnels
The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.
Russell L. Ackoff
This logic also explains why creative work is and ought to be hard, frustrating, and sometimes exhausting. Skilled creators find ways to be somewhat less inefficient, for example, by generating ideas faster, testing promising ideas rather than endlessly arguing about them, and killing bad ideas fast. But piles of academic studies confirm there is no quick and easy path to creativity. Psychologist Teresa Amabile has studied creativity for more than forty years. She says, if you want to kill creativity, insist that people standardize their work methods, spend as little time as possible on every task, have as few failures as possible, and explain and justify how they spend every minute and dollar. Imaginative people, because they live in a cognitive minefield, do poor work when they are forced to be fast and efficient and to avoid mistakes. If they aren’t constantly struggling, feeling confused, failing, and arguing, and trying, modifying, and rejecting new ideas, they are doing it wrong.
Robert I. Sutton (The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder)
Here are two truisms to keep in mind: 1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. 2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important. From this moment forward, remember this: What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich)
Voyagers, I’ve always wanted to write about you. And now, at 4:41 a.m. on an autumn morning, Words have found their way into my mind. I picture myself like you— Distant from life, Alone, Yet moving towards an unknown destination! Like you, in the early stages of my journey, I could see, I could gather knowledge and transmit it, I was useful and efficient. But sometimes, to keep connected to the world, To be able to stay on course and conserve my energy, I had to shut parts of myself down, To survive, To go blind, to be deaf, to be isolated, and just occasionally signal my existence to the world. The same thing I do, that you do, that so many others do. The boundless reaches of space Have become somewhat more comprehensible through you, Yet the depths of the human soul remain unfathomable, And its pain incurable. We live in an age surrounded by a torrent of information, Yet somehow, we remain lonely and lost. Language has advanced, There are words for nearly everything, Everyone can describe their own state of mind, yet we’re still at war with one another. Earth has turned into a vast ship, Perhaps like Noah’s Ark, With maximum diversity and multiplicity, Yet everyone on this ship plays their own tune, rallies their own cause! Someone steps forward, claiming each individual’s thoughts and personal benefit are like rare pearls to be cherished, While another insists that collective welfare takes precedence, That the needs of the masses outweigh individual desires. Some launch movements to claim their rights, While others start movements to flaunt the rights they’ve acquired. No one knows what they truly want; We’re all still lost. I don’t know how Earth looks from afar— Perhaps like a blueberry-flavored lollipop, A lollipop with a stick, But Earth’s stick is an invisible one made of sorrow. I find something common among all the passengers on this ship, All the inhabitants of this blueberry lollipop: sorrow. A fetus in its mother’s womb is also like a lollipop, But connected by an umbilical cord. As a fetus, Growing in the mother’s womb, Suffering, malnutrition, and physical ailments can be painful for us. If the mother’s state is stable, We may enjoy brief periods of security and calm, but after that, We must endure the pain of separation, Learn how to breathe, And besides the sorrow of leaving security behind, We face new emotions like fear and anger. Later in life, We each take our own path. No matter how much they try to show humans as social creatures, It’s always the individual who walks their own way, who has the freedom to choose, Even if one finds the meaning of their path in joining a group or a collective, it’s their individual choice that put them on that path. Today, people have countless options to join others who are like them, And these options themselves bring confusion, And when you join a group out of confusion, You treat the other groups with hostility. Science, philosophy, religion, politics…each of them has thousands of branches, and each branch Wants to disprove the other, cleanse itself of its shameful past. Freedom of speech has become an excuse for verbal assaults and psychological wounds, Non-violence has become a breeding ground for new and emerging dictators, For heartless sects and brutal factions. Knowledge and science alone cannot save us, Just as religion couldn’t. I don’t want to write about chaos, Life isn’t that disorganized, In some corner of the world, A lover is staring up at his beloved’s window, A child is laughing joyfully. But writing about sorrow, Speaking of chaos and Asking questions can reveal where we stand. Now, we know so much about space, And about the Sun, too. The James Webb telescope has mapped out the cosmos for us, and countless projects are underway for the future, crafted with flawless precision and extraordinary coherence, but the rift between humans remains deep.
Arash Ghadir
His name is C. J. Skender, and he is a living legend. Skender teaches accounting, but to call him an accounting professor doesn’t do him justice. He’s a unique character, known for his trademark bow ties and his ability to recite the words to thousands of songs and movies on command. He may well be the only fifty-eight-year-old man with fair skin and white hair who displays a poster of the rapper 50 Cent in his office. And while he’s a genuine numbers whiz, his impact in the classroom is impossible to quantify. Skender is one of a few professors for whom Duke University and the University of North Carolina look past their rivalry to cooperate: he is in such high demand that he has permission to teach simultaneously at both schools. He has earned more than two dozen major teaching awards, including fourteen at UNC, six at Duke, and five at North Carolina State. Across his career, he has now taught close to six hundred classes and evaluated more than thirty-five thousand students. Because of the time that he invests in his students, he has developed what may be his single most impressive skill: a remarkable eye for talent. In 2004, Reggie Love enrolled in C. J. Skender’s accounting class at Duke. It was a summer course that Love needed to graduate, and while many professors would have written him off as a jock, Skender recognized Love’s potential beyond athletics. “For some reason, Duke football players have never flocked to my class,” Skender explains, “but I knew Reggie had what it took to succeed.” Skender went out of his way to engage Love in class, and his intuition was right that it would pay dividends. “I knew nothing about accounting before I took C. J.’s class,” Love says, “and the fundamental base of knowledge from that course helped guide me down the road to the White House.” In Obama’s mailroom, Love used the knowledge of inventory that he learned in Skender’s class to develop a more efficient process for organizing and digitizing a huge backlog of mail. “It was the number-one thing I implemented,” Love says, and it impressed Obama’s chief of staff, putting Love on the radar. In 2011, Love left the White House to study at Wharton. He sent a note to Skender: “I’m on the train to Philly to start the executive MBA program and one of the first classes is financial accounting—and I just wanted to say thanks for sticking with me when I was in your class.
Adam M. Grant (Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success)
Efficiency, Peter said, is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Bob Buford (Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance)
True productivity is not first about efficiency — doing things right and doing them quickly — but effectiveness — doing the right things.
Matt Perman (What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done)
Management is a bottom line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” -Peter Drucker
Clint Hollingsworth (Wolves in Street Clothing: How Animal Behavior Teaches Survival in the Asphalt Jungle)
Backtesting against historical data, all indications whispered confident promises for what this thing could do once set in motion. As John puts it, “A slight pattern emerged from the overwhelming noise; we had stumbled across a persistent pricing inefficiency in a corner of the market, a small edge over the average investor, which appeared repeatable.” Inefficiencies are what traders live for. A perfectly efficient market can’t be played, but if you can identify the right imperfection, it’s payday.
Eric Siegel (Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die)
Two points in particular must be mentioned. I have pointed out before that social legislation or, more generally, institutional change for the benefit of the masses is not simply something which has been forced upon capitalist society by an ineluctable necessity to alleviate the ever-deepening misery of the poor but that, besides raising the standard of living of the masses by virtue of its automatic effects, the capitalist process also provided for that legislation the means “and the will.” The words in quotes require further explanation that is to be found in the principle of spreading rationality. The capitalist process rationalizes behavior and ideas and by so doing chases from our minds, along with metaphysical belief, mystic and romantic ideas of all sorts. Thus it reshapes not only our methods of attaining our ends but also these ultimate ends themselves. “Free thinking” in the sense of materialistic monism, laicism and pragmatic acceptance of the world this side of the grave follow from this not indeed by logical necessity but nevertheless very naturally. On the one hand, our inherited sense of duty, deprived of its traditional basis, becomes focused in utilitarian ideas about the betterment of mankind which, quite illogically to be sure, seem to withstand rationalist criticism better than, say, the fear of God does. On the other hand, the same rationalization of the soul rubs off all the glamour of super-empirical sanction from every species of classwise rights. This then, together with the typically capitalist enthusiasm for Efficiency and Service—so completely different from the body of ideas which would have been associated with those terms by the typical knight of old—breeds that “will” within the bourgeoisie itself. Feminism, an essentially capitalist phenomenon, illustrates the point still more clearly. The reader will realize that these tendencies must be understood “objectively” and that therefore no amount of anti-feminist or anti-reformist talk or even of temporary opposition to any particular measure proves anything against this analysis. These things are the very symptoms of the tendencies they pretend to fight.
Joseph A. Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy)
What in God’s name was he doing? It would have been insane enough to kiss her in the privacy of the house, let alone out here in freaking public. He pulled away from her, but God, it was quite possibly one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say. Sorry that he had to stop. Sorry that he couldn’t take off her clothes and get it going with her right then and there. He wisely let her make her own interpretation. “No,” she said. “I . . . I’m . . .” She looked as confused as he felt. How could they both have had such bad lapses in judgment at exactly the same moment? “Bad timing,” he said. Bad timing, bad thinking, bad call, bad everything but sex. Good sex. If they had been able to keep going it would have been very, very, very good sex. Except afterward, all of the collective bads would’ve reared up and bit him on the ass. He was on the job, for christsake. He was supposed to protect Alessandra, and last time he checked, there was nothing in the rule book that talked about doing that with any amount of efficiency while in a horizontal positon, without any clothes on.
Suzanne Brockmann (Bodyguard)
If effectiveness is doing the right things, efficiency is doing things right.
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life)
WE WILL ARGUE that to understand world inequality we have to understand why some societies are organized in very inefficient and socially undesirable ways. Nations sometimes do manage to adopt efficient institutions and achieve prosperity, but alas, these are the rare cases. Most economists and policymakers have focused on “getting it right,” while what is really needed is an explanation for why poor nations “get it wrong.” Getting it wrong is mostly not about ignorance or culture. As we will show, poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose. To understand this, you have to go beyond economics and expert advice on the best thing to do and, instead, study how decisions actually get made, who gets to make them, and why those people decide to do what they do. This is the study of politics and political processes. Traditionally economics has ignored politics, but understanding politics is crucial for explaining world inequality. As the economist Abba Lerner noted in the 1970s, “Economics has gained the title Queen of the Social Sciences by choosing solved political problems as its domain.” We
Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
You would have been impressed, Luke. She never flinched. She knew all the right things to do and remained perfectly calm. Efficient, skilled, confident.” Mel smiled. “She’s going to be an incredible nurse. You should be so proud of her.” “I am,” Luke replied. “And not at all surprised.” He draped an arm around her shoulders. And Shelby thought, Oh God. I have to get this over with. She didn’t need advice from Mel or anyone else. She’d given him every chance, but he never said a word about how he felt about her, not a syllable about wanting a life with her. She had to make herself move on before she couldn’t. Tears gathered in her eyes. “Let me finish up here, Luke. I’m going to follow Mel and Cameron back to the clinic, help clean up the Humvee, restock it. I’ll catch up with you later.” “Are you crying?” he asked softly. “I might be overwhelmed.” He frowned slightly at the glistening in her eyes. “Sure,” he said. He kissed her forehead. “Take your time.
Robyn Carr (Temptation Ridge)
Effective design needs to satisfy a large number of constraints and concerns, including shape and form, cost and efficiency, reliability and effectiveness, understandability and usability, the pleasure of the appearance, the pride of ownership, and the joy of actual use. HCD is a procedure for addressing these requirements, but with an emphasis on two things: solving the right problem, and doing so in a way that meets human needs and capabilities.
Donald A. Norman (The Design of Everyday Things)
Management is a bottom line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. You
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
But you can’t forget how easy it is to seduce people,” Ben said. “You see that everywhere, be it politics or religion. Even here in Europe, populists have been wildly successful despite the fact that this continent has a lot of experience with fanatical right- and left-wing ideology.” “Most people yearn for guidance,” Fritz said. “They want others to determine their lives for them, at least when all is said and done. In politics, the only people who are respected are so-called ‘strong’ leaders or politicians who show the way. It’s hardly surprising these people don’t have a basic understanding of democracy.” “That’s the problem,” said Ben. “People love to be told what they should do. And the worse they have it, the more grateful they are for a strong hand to push them.” “That said, we don’t exactly have it that bad here in Europe,” Hannes added. “Sure, there’s always some economic crisis and unemployment is rising, but still most people have it good enough that they can’t be enthralled by some dictator.” “Economic crises aren’t the only reason people turn to extremism,” Fritz said. “It’s also about personal crises. Look at the faces on the bus. How many people look happy?” “They’re probably just tired,” Ben joked. “But it’s true. There are plenty of studies which suggest that people in poorer countries are happier than we are. But when did you last hear politicians discuss the question of how we actually want to live? Emotional needs are basically irrelevant. It’s all about growth, recovery, optimization, and efficiency. If you work day after day in some office like a robot, there’s an inner emptiness that reality shows and dramas on television can no longer fill. Take a look at the nonsense the masses tune into night after night. You can’t consume real feelings, you have to live them.” “But that’s exactly what our society has forgotten how to do,” Fritz said. “You need someone to advise you on how to be ‘happy.’ At some schools, students can now choose Happiness as an elective. How sad is that? Have we become so far removed from real life that we have to introduce happiness as a school subject? How can society not understand something so fundamental?” “Now some charismatic, eloquent politician appears who knows exactly how to appeal to people,” Ben said. “Do you really think we would be completely immune to a politician’s temptations and promises today?” “Okay, okay!” Hannes laughed and raised his hands. “I give up. At the next neo-Nazi march, I’ll be standing in the front line of the counterdemonstration, I promise. But speaking of robots—I spent way too long spinning on the hamster wheel today. And Fritz has already given me a list of things to do tomorrow. It’s been lovely chatting, but I have to hit the hay.” “Man! But we’ve only just started planning the revolution,” Ben joked. “No, my young colleague’s right.” Fritz rose from his chair. “I just have to use the bathroom and then I’ll be on my way.” “It’s straight ahead.” Ben showed him the way and handed Hannes another beer. “Come on, you Goody Two-Shoes. Let’s have a
Hendrik Falkenberg (Time Heals No Wounds (Baltic Sea Crime #1))
My conclusion at the time was that finalizing the story before production began was still a worthy goal—we just hadn’t achieved it yet. As we continued to make films, however, I came to believe that my goal was not just impractical but naïve. By insisting on the importance of getting our ducks in a row early, we had come perilously close to embracing a fallacy. Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on—but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal. I see this over and over again in other companies: A subversion takes place in which streamlining the process or increasing production supplants the ultimate goal, with each person or group thinking they’re doing the right thing—when, in fact, they have strayed off course. When efficiency or consistency of workflow are not balanced by other equally strong countervailing forces, the result is that new ideas—our ugly babies—aren’t afforded the attention and protection they need to shine and mature. They are abandoned or never conceived of in the first place. Emphasis is placed on doing safer projects that mimic proven money-makers just to keep something—anything!—moving through the pipeline (see The Lion King 1½, a direct-to-video effort that came out in 2004, six years after The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride). This kind of thinking yields predictable, unoriginal fare because it prevents the kind of organic ferment that fuels true inspiration. But it does feed the Beast.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
Wu Wei is a delight in knowing that everything will be all right. It is not refusing to do anything, it is refusing to do insignificant things. Wu Wei is efficiency. It is the precondition of Wu Bu Wei. Wu Wei requires giving up secondary matters and aiming for the key matters. You can only Wu Bu Wei because you Wu Wei. The modern meets the ancient. Wu Wei is the secret of health. Only if you abandon anxiety can you do anything with a healthy mind and body.
Qiguang Zhao (Do Nothing & Do Everything: An Illustrated New Taoism)
In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall
Anonymous
Efficient” is being able to get things done. “Effective” is doing the right things in the right order, and making sure you address everything that is urgent, vital and important, in every part of your life.
Lee Cockerell (Time Management Magic: How To Get More Done Every Day And Move From Surviving To Thriving)
large companies do not usually have efficient communication paths from the people closest to some of these changes at the bottom of the company to the top of the company which are the people making the big decisions … Even in the case where part of the company does the right thing at the lower levels, usually the upper levels screw it up somehow.
Adam Lashinsky (Inside Apple)
I agree that because investors work hard to evaluate every new piece of information, asset prices immediately reflect the consensus view of the information’s significance. I do not, however, believe the consensus view is necessarily correct. In January 2000, Yahoo sold at $237. In April 2001 it was at $11. Anyone who argues that the market was right both times has his or her head in the clouds; it has to have been wrong on at least one of those occasions. But that doesn’t mean many investors were able to detect and act on the market’s error. If prices in efficient markets already reflect the consensus, then sharing the consensus view will make you likely to earn just an average return.
Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor (Columbia Business School Publishing))
I am sure we all know this: Efficiency is doing things right & Effectiveness is doing the right things. But, it doesn’t mean doing pointless things perfectly, efficiently or effectively.. Let’s be honest, Sweetheart. Sometimes we all are just stuck in juggling with balls. This weekend, take a moment to step back & ask yourself: “Is this REALLY the best way to spend my time?” Please, don’t waste your energy on stuff that doesn’t matter.. Darling listen – This weekend, try to be your best version by being effective & efficient in real sense... Stay firm in prayers, be positive, fight for what is yours & wait for your time to come. May you make this weekend amazing & unforgettable! Blessings!
Rajesh Goyal, राजेश गोयल
The question of suffering brings me to one last concern around the use of data-driven techniques to bring about better government: the importance of exceptions, otherwise known as mercy. Efficiency, almost by definition, has to do with following rules and patterns; if there is an inefficiency within a rule, it can be ironed out by making a sub-rule. But sometimes our moral intuition just tells us that making an exception is the right thing to do, even if we can't explain or defend the precedent.
Pete Buttigieg (Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future)
If it really is the right thing to do, the efficiency does not matter. Your obligation is faithfulness, not productivity or measurable results.
Alan Noble (You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World)
Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.” –Peter Drucker
Kevin E. Kruse (15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 Entrepreneurs)
December 8 Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. Thomas Mann How does a man of action think? Well, to start with, he thinks about what can be done to solve the problem at hand or to make things better. The man of action is a go-getter. He doesn’t wait to see what others think or depend on others to step up while he minds his own business. The man of action wants to get things done and make things right. His thoughts center on accomplishing his goals, and doing so in the most efficient manner possible. “Do it now and do it right” is his mantra. The man of thought on the other hand, likes to think things through before he makes a move. He examines all the possible outcomes of his actions and tries to see the situation from all sides. Realizing that there is more to most things than meets the eye, he delves deeper into things in order to develop a true understanding of them. He searches for the truth so he can make decisions based on facts rather than emotions. Justice and honor are foremost on his mind. The warrior should find balance between the traits of the two types of men. Think like a man of action, but act like a man of thought. Be ready for action and know what action is needed should things come to that, but at the same time, be calm, collected and rational like a man of thought. Think things through before you speak or act. Don’t be rash. Integrate these traits into one and find a sense of balance between the two. A calm, rational mind which is always ready for action is a trait of the true warrior. I think like a man of action. I act like a man of thought.
Bohdi Sanders (BUSHIDO: The Way of the Warrior)
Effectiveness is doing the right things, while efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness must always come first, then efficiency. System design is about automating and outsourcing your desired results. Give yourself the space to put your attention and energy where you want. The goal is to off-load your mental and physical plate.
Benjamin P. Hardy (Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation)
efficiency is doing things right while effectiveness is doing the right things. There is no point doing things right if those things don’t move you closer to your goals.
Thibaut Meurisse (Strategic Mindset : A 7-Day Plan to Identify What Matters and Create a Strategy that Works (Productivity Series Book 4))
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Douglas Wilson (Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Work & Wealth)
It seems wrong to call it "business." It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner. business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher — and none of us wavered in the belief that "stakes'' didn't mean "money." For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn't our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living- and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is — you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
The truth is someone is earning a living doing the thing you’re passionate about—doing the thing you obsessively love. But they just got lucky! Well, maybe some of them got lucky, and maybe some were at the right place at the right time, but even luck has a recipe for continued success. Plus, there are thousands of people pursuing your passion (and making a good living from it) who didn’t get lucky, who didn’t achieve stardom or get everything they wanted overnight. They put in a ton of work, experienced debilitating failures and losses, and obsessively followed that beacon of passion until they were able to call it their full-time mission. Why not learn from those people? If you want to learn how to turn your passion into your mission, the fastest, most efficient way is to emulate someone already doing it. It’s called modeling,
Joshua Fields Millburn (Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life)
But most of us no longer do cog-like work. In the information age, success is less about efficiency than effectiveness—that is, the ability to get the right things done, rather than just the ability to do things right.
Keith Ferrazzi (Who's Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success--And Won't Let You Fail)
We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
It’s embarrassing for any executive or professional to forget the name of the person you just met, but it’s not life-changing. It’s the other working memory lapses that have a much bigger impact on your relationships and your career: consistently veering off course during a conversation, interrupting people because you’re afraid you’ll forget what you want to say, or arriving late for important meetings because once again you got caught up in a phone call. It’s not just frustrating for you – but for everyone else around you. No matter how good your intentions are, weak working memory will wreak havoc with your results. The significance of working memory to your overall performance cannot be overstated. It is the linchpin to all other executive functions. If it’s in top working order, other executive functions will be too. When prioritizing, working memory helps you remember – in the moment – all possible priorities while you sort through them. When planning, working memory helps you hold in your head all the details that you need to make time for. Regulating your emotions requires you to remember what you’re trying to achieve – despite the pull of strong feelings. You may be accomplished and highly intelligent and still struggle with working memory. When you do, the contrast between your intellectual ability and your ability to execute consistently can have a devasting impact on your self-concept. No matter how smart you are, or how much you care, the people around you may judge you for these working memory lapses and not who you truly are. Worse, you may be judging yourself. Here are some ways to support your working memory: Identify when you will need memory strategies You are unique. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Great memory strategists know themselves and have a tool kit for every occasion. Good strategies are efficient, automatic and flexible. Assume you’ll forget – everything Never assume you’ll remember something just because it’s front of mind right now. Your brain needs a strategy to remember it 30 minutes from now. Or tomorrow. Create your own external hard drives Visuals are essential. Plans, agendas, and a central notebook are all great. Whatever method you choose, it should be in plain sight. If you have to open a device, or look for the post-it-note, you’re giving your working memory one more thing to remember – which will definitely not help you. Create visual memory This is a good trick for someone with solid inner vision. Put the idea into your mind’s eye. See it. Experience it. Describe it to yourself. When time comes to remember it, go to your mind’s eye to find it. Say it out loud As you say it out loud to yourself or another person, really pay attention to the words. If you forget names, repeat that person’s name and look at them while focusing on connecting their name to what you know about them. Chunk information Practice categorizing or chunking items that go together and focus on the chunk, not the detail. Your working memory remembers chunks of information much better than 30 odd details. Pay attention to your working memory and show the world – and yourself – just how amazing you are!
lyndahoffman