Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

One works without thinking how to work.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.

It took me thirty-six years; and, in some fifty stories, ranging in length from short-shorts to novels, I think I must have touched, in one way or another, on every aspect of computers and computerization. And (mark this!) I did it without ever knowing anything at all about computers in any real sense. To this day, I don't. I am totally inept with machinery... on my typewriter I turn out books at the contemptible rate of one a month

Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the orther team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.

The workload is so heavy you forget about thinking, it just kind of happens.

You have to remember everything you've created. But then comes a moment when it's all automatic pilot, where it all comes together and you don't have to think about it any more.

I used to have to pick up the phone and talk to people who placed orders for the car. When you reach a certain size, you need to have processes in place.

The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don't get appreciably faster. That's because it's become automatic. You've moved it to the back of your mind's filing cabinet.

Even though it's hard to learn how to back your car out the driveway at first, once it becomes a habit, you can do it almost automatically and think about something else, like the meeting that you need to go to today or what's on the radio.

Even before I had an assistant, my calendar was color-coded and I had all these different e-mail rules for how to prioritize e-mails, so I made it a point years ago to figure all that stuff out because my life was a mess.

I will be ruthless in cutting out waste, streamlining structures and improving efficiency.

The investment we're all looking for is actually saving labor... Look at what the internet is doing to retail.

A lot of times I make people better by getting stupid, distracting, bureaucratic stuff off their desk. That's an incredibly easy way to make a senior person more productive.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

… increased industrial efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less labor

I've always been trying to do as little as possible, and I'm getting better at it all the time.

I think the thing that I think about the most when I consider my father's philosophies is attaining that third stage of performance where you no longer have to think about what you're doing; you've worked long and hard enough to be able to have your body respond when you want it without your mind getting in the way.

By helping us to be more productive, technology lets us to spend less time focusing on survival, and more on solving other challenges.

I taught everyone a very bad lesson at my publisher because they actually gave me deadlines this time and I'm now meeting them. I used to say, "Here's my book; it's six years late." I'm so much faster now, and work differently. With all the years of writing, I think I still draft as obsessively, but I think back to writing. On your first story, you start at draft one. On your second story, you start at draft ten. On your third story, you start at draft one hundred. If you need a hundred and eight drafts, you may write eight instead of a hundred and eight.

Computerization eliminates the middleman

Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.

Whatever the advantages of the machine may be - and they are many - the very ease of its use is bound to make away with intimacy - the intercourse of human beings, of animals, or of that which we still think of as the natural world.

People who excel at book learning tend to call up from memory what they have learned in order to follow stored instructions. Others who are better at internalized learning use the thoughts that flow from their subconscious. The experienced skier doesn't recite instructions on how to ski and then execute them; rather, he does it well "without thinking," in the same way he breathes without thinking. Understanding these differences is essential.