Posts Tagged: quotes

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17
Jun 09

Knowledge work can’t be done in sound bites

Maggie Jackson says:

“The average knowledge worker switches tasks every three minutes, and, once distracted, a worker takes nearly a half-hour to resume the original task, according to Gloria Mark, a leader in the new field of “interruption science.”

Interruptions and the requisite recovery time now consume 28 percent of a worker’s day, the business research firm Basex estimates. The risks are clear. As one top executive told me, “Knowledge work can’t be done in sound bites.” “

From Fighting a War Against Distraction via The Practice of Leadership

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15
May 09

Quote: Ferrazzi

“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.” [via Change This Who’s Got Your Back]

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6
Apr 09

Emergency? Plan ahead.

Seth says:

It’s amazing that people have so much time to fret about today’s emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow’s.

Agreed. I’ve got a number of emergencies just waiting to happen … and I’m not doing anything about it today, because it won’t be a problem till tomorrow. This is not good planning at all.

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5
Mar 09

Quotes

“The funny thing about metrics – the wrong one distracts more than it helps.” -  Garrick Van Buren

It is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones. The main reason we don’t make meetings more productive is that we don’t value our time properly. The people who call meetings and those who attend them are not thinking about time as their most valuable resource. - Reid Hastie [via SvN]

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8
Oct 08

Afraid of a Good Idea

Two thoughts that seem to fit together:

It’s easy to be against something … that you’re afraid of. And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand. [via Seth Godin]

and

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance. [Daniel Davies via Paul Krugman via Daring Fireball]

Instead of acting on a Good Idea, I find there is often opposition, prejudices and misunderstandings.

Occasionally an idea will be acted on, but only after a protracted waiting period – where the misunderstandings are cleared up, the prejudices are corrected. This can be days, months, and regularly – years. So, like a balanced free market:

The greatest friend of truth is time  -Charles Caleb Colton

But is waiting the only way to get a idea confirmed as good? How do you make the time go faster? Revving up a marketing machine with brochures, power points, and celebrity endorsements doesn’t seem right. How do you accelerate the time between having a good idea and having it recognized and acted on?

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