Top 100 Efficiency Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.”

— Taiichi Ohno

Also featured in: Lean Methodology Quotes

2. “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

— Stephen R. Covey

Also featured in: Inspirational Quotes, Business Quotes, Goal Quotes, Time Quotes

3. “Plan your work and work your plan.”

— Napoleon Hill

Also featured in: Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes, Hard Work Quotes, Action Quotes, Strategy Quotes

4. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it.”

— Peter F. Drucker

Also featured in: Performance Quotes, Decision-Making Quotes, Quotes for Better Decisions

5. “Believe it or not, it is not only possible to accomplish more by doing less, it is mandatory. Enter the world of elimination.”

— Tim Ferriss

Also featured in: Performance Quotes, Quotes About Believing, Time Management Quotes

6. “One today is worth two tomorrows. Lost time is never found again. Time is money. Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff that life is made of. You may delay, but time will not.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Also featured in: Time Quotes, Prosperity Quotes, Wisdom Quotes, Work Ethic Quotes

7. “The message of the Kaizen strategy is that not a day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company.”

— Masaaki Imai

Also featured in: Strategy Quotes, Lean Methodology Quotes

8. “There are four purposes of improvement: easier, better, faster, and cheaper. These four goals appear in the order of priority.”

— Shigeo Shingo

Also featured in: Lean Methodology Quotes

9. “I take the market-efficiency hypothesis to be the simple statement that security prices fully reflect all available information.”

— Eugene Fama

Also featured in: Investing Quotes

10. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

— Parkinson's law

Also featured in: Startup Quotes, Funny Quotes, Time Quotes, Quotes About Work

11. “Do nothing that is of no use.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

Also featured in: Focus Quotes, Quotes About Work, Purpose Quotes

12. “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”

— Henry Ford

Also featured in: Hard Work Quotes, Competition Quotes, Productivity Quotes

13. “What gets measured gets improved.”

— Robin S. Sharma

Also featured in: Action Quotes, Performance Quotes, Growth Quotes

14. “Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.”

— Bruce Lee

Also featured in: Martial Arts Quotes

15. “Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Values Quotes, Wisdom Quotes, Philosophical Quotes

16. “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.”

— Jean-Baptiste Say

Also featured in: Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes, Wealth Quotes

17. “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”

— Thomas A. Edison

Also featured in: Opportunity Quotes, Performance Quotes, Taking Action Quotes

18. “I am too busy for insecurities; it’s just a distraction. If I have any, I have ignored them for so long they have gone away.”

— Casey Neistat

Also featured in: Focus Quotes, Confidence Quotes, Work Ethic Quotes

19. “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

— W. Edwards Deming

Also featured in: Business Quotes, Quality Quotes

20. “Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.”

— Peter F. Drucker

Also featured in: Business Quotes, Career Development Quotes, Humor Quotes

21. “There’s only one way to work – like hell.”

— Bette Davis

Also featured in: Dedication Quotes, Work Ethic Quotes, Commitment Quotes, Quotes About Work

22. “Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process.”

— W. Edwards Deming

Also featured in: Business Quotes

23. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

— Alexander Graham Bell

Also featured in: Focus Quotes, Work Ethic Quotes, Quotes About Work

24. “Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.”

— Peter F. Drucker

Also featured in: Business Quotes, Productivity Quotes, Teamwork Quotes

25. “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”

— Dale Carnegie

Also featured in: Common Sense Quotes, Taking Action Quotes, Quotes About Work

26. “My motto is: ‘Keep it simple, stupid. Work smart, not hard.’”

— Joe Teti

Also featured in: Smart Quotes, Quotes About Work

27. “Procrastination is attitude’s natural assassin. There’s nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task.”

— William James

Also featured in: Work Ethic Quotes, Taking Action Quotes, Time Management Quotes, Procrastination Quotes

28. “Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.”

— Tom Peters

Also featured in: Taking Action Quotes, Adaptability Quotes

29. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

— Lord Kelvin

Also featured in: Performance Quotes, Progress Quotes, Engineering Quotes

30. “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”

— Thomas A. Edison

Also featured in: Work Ethic Quotes, Real Quotes, Intelligent Quotes

31. “Don’t confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy.”

— Robin S. Sharma

32. “Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.”

— Tim Ferriss

Also featured in: Performance Quotes, Quotes About Thinking, Simplicity Quotes

33. “Think twice, code once.”

— Waseem Latif

Also featured in: Engineering Quotes

34. “Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.”

— W. Edwards Deming

Also featured in: Quality Quotes

35. “Doing something unimportant well does not make it important,”

— Tim Ferriss

Also featured in: Important Quotes

36. “Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

— Bill Gates

37. “Doing less is not being lazy. Don’t give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity.”

— Tim Ferriss

Also featured in: Performance Quotes, Time Management Quotes, Quotes About Giving

38. “It is always cheaper to do the job right the first time.”

— Phil Crosby

Also featured in: Excellence Quotes, Work Ethic Quotes

39. “Take what’s useful, discard what is not.”

— Bruce Lee

Also featured in: Martial Arts Quotes

40. “Above all, keep it simple.”

— Auguste Escoffier

Also featured in: Preparation Quotes, Simplicity Quotes

41. “Unless structure follows strategy, inefficiency results.”

— Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

Also featured in: Strategy Quotes

42. “You can only have two things in life, reasons and results. Reasons don’t count.”

— Robert Anthony

Also featured in: Accountability Quotes, Performance Quotes

43. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Also featured in: Boss Quotes

44. “Just because you are doing a lot more doesn’t mean you are getting a lot done. Don’t confuse movement with progress!”

— Denzel Washington

45. “Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”

— James Harrington

Also featured in: Excellence Quotes, Performance Quotes, Quality Quotes

46. “Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.”

— Henry Ford

Also featured in: Performance Quotes, Career Development Quotes, Preparation Quotes

47. “A place for everything, everything in its place.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Also featured in: Preparation Quotes

48. “Find out what works, and do more of that.”

— Steve de Shazer

49. “There is a better way for everything. Find it.”

— Thomas A. Edison

Also featured in: Quotes for Better Decisions, Quotes About Ideas

50. “Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.”

— Henry Ford

Also featured in: Adaptability Quotes