Faced with a time shortage, we squeeze tasks into the nooks and crannies of our calendar, leaving less and less time to switch between them. As a result, we become less and less productive exactly when we need to be most productive.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes how poor time management leads to decreased productivity when it is needed the most.
In this quote, Sendhil Mullainathan discusses the issue of time scarcity and how it prompts individuals to cram tasks into tight schedules. He explains that this behavior ultimately reduces our overall productivity, especially during critical times when efficiency is paramount, illustrating the paradox of trying to do more in less time.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation on improving workplace efficiency.
Economists specialize in pointing out unpleasant trade-offs - a skill that is on full display in the health care debate. We want patients to receive the best care available. We also want consumers to pay less. And we don't want to bankrupt the government or private insurers. Something must give.
The problem with data is that it says a lot, but it also says nothing. 'Big data' is terrific, but it's usually thin. To understand why something is happening, we have to engage in both forensics and guess work.
There's a popular image of people who don't save for the future as lacking in self-control. But the reason saving is so hard has less to do with self-control and more to do with a scarcity of attention.
January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.
Busy people all make the same mistake: they assume they are short on time, which of course, they are. But time is not their only scarce resource. They are also short on bandwidth. By bandwidth I mean basic cognitive resources - psychologists call them working memory and executive control - that we use in nearly every activity.
Never check email first thing in the morning. Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading email as a postponement excuse.
Sometimes the biggest gain in productive energy will come from cleaning the cobwebs, dealing with old business, and clearing the desks—cutting loose debris that's impeding forward motion.
Being selective-doing less-is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
We know where most of the creativity, the innovation, the stuff that drives productivity lies - in the minds of those closest to the work.
Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.
The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.
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