Stephen Covey Quotes

To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.

Obviously, the highest type of efficiency is that which can utilize existing material to the best advantage.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

Engineering or technology is all about using the power of science to make life better for people, to reduce cost, to improve comfort, to improve productivity, etc.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.

The faculty of using my resources well diminishes when their number grows.

It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist.

Efficiency for me is an obsession..It not only helps me get stronger but makes things simpler.

Efficiency is anything that scores.

To be efficient means getting the job done in a smart, resourceful and timely way. To be effective means getting the right job done well, efficiently or not.

Do what lasts, get around to everything else.

Our own economy tells us to take as much as we can get, right? Our own economy says, you're going to be the most successful graduate if you go into the business world and take as much you can get. That's not how nature works. Nature has a much simpler economy. Everything in nature takes what it needs. That's it. You don't see an oak tree gathering up all the resources. An oak tree takes what it needs to be the authentic oak tree it is.

The less I say the more my work gets done.

One trouble with being efficient is that it makes everybody hate you so.

Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.

The carpenter is not the best who makes more chips than all the rest.

Always focus on accomplishments rather than activities.

The gross size of our talent inventories is less important than the net use of our talents?

So many people spend so much time on things that aren't important. It's the difference between success and failure.

Time is your most precious resource; make every minute count.

One of the most important rules of personal effectiveness is the 10/90 rule.

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.