James Stockdale Quotes

When I ask people how much time they spend not doing their job - time spent on 'work-about-work' or phone calls or e-mails - people regularly tell me 60, or even 90 percent. So if Asana could take that down closer to zero, we could potentially double the effectiveness of humanity.

Basically, I want to make all of humanity more efficient by exploiting the human cycles that get wasted.

As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.

Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.

In many respects, we really are trying to not run the Social Office like a business, but we do have a strategy. We do have a mission. We are trying to standardize certain things so that our time is not spent on, you know, picking flowers or linens, that we've got standards.

I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that.

If employees need to stay late in order to curry favor with the boss, what motivation do they have to get work done during normal business hours? After all, they can put in the requisite 'face time' whether they are surfing the Internet or analyzing customer data.

As a wife, daughter, friend, and the founder and CEO of LearnVest, my schedule is anything but simple. But I learned early on how meticulously manage my time.

We know we need bosses and deadlines to help us get work done. But sometimes we can also use an external push to make us have a good time. In both cases, our future self will appreciate the help.

The time I save setting up and cleaning up probably balances out by the time I spend on output.

The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.

Over the last four years, I've made a habit of coming into my office in the morning and just getting to work.

Anything that is wasted effort represents wasted time. The best management of our time thus becomes linked inseparably with the best utilization of our efforts.

We need to have fewer meetings, not more—as we have to have time to put into effect some of the things we decide in these meetings.

As entrepreneurs, we already know our most valuable asset is time, but not every entrepreneur knows how to properly use that time.

Your instinct when someone is busy is to give them the least amount of work so that they can do it.

If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no time.

We value the clock for its speed and efficiency. The clock has its place, efficiency has its place, after effectiveness. The symbol of effectiveness is the compass a sense of direction, purpose, vision, perspective, and balance. But the empowerment process itself is not efficient.

Work mixed with management becomes not only easier but more profitable. The time is past when anyone can boast about 'hard work' without having a corresponding result to show for it.

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this world.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

When you kill time, you kill your opportunities for success.

Here's a pointer culled from the careers of men who have attained notable success: Don't sit in your office during the hours prospects can be seen. Do your office work before or after the hours during which possible customers can be reached. This may mean adding an hour or two quite often to your day's work; but in times like this particularly, the securing of a satisfactory amount of business through the expenditure of an extra hour or two a day is not an unreasonable price to pay.

You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.