Jeff Davidson > Quotes

“One third of managers are victims of "Information Fatigue Syndrome." 49 percent said they are unable to handle the vast amounts of information received. 33 percent of managers were suffering ill health as a direct result of information overload. 62 percent admitted their business and social relationships suffer. 66 percent reported tension with colleagues and diminished job satisfaction. 43 percent think that important decisions are delayed and their abilities to make decisions are affected as a result of having too much information. (Reuters's "Dying for Business" report)”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“I would be utterly emabarrassed to have others around me hear my half of what can only be described as pedestrian. "Yes, the elevator has just pulled up to the 16th floor." Do these people have the ability to go, for say, an eight- or ten-minute stretch without being in contact with someone else? What are they afraid of? Confronting their own thoughts?”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“Since the 1980s, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) has been on the rise, not just among children, but now among the adult population as well.
The sudden rise of adult ADD, while it may have genetic components, certainly receives a major boost from our kinetic, hyper-speed, information-bombarded society. Victims of adult ADD are likely to initiate more tasks and projects that they'll ever finish, get bored easily, seek thrills readily, have a propensity to be late while loathing having to wait, and not be averse to taking foolish risks.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“Your everyday supermarket now carries roughly 40,000 items - twice as many as a decade ago. There are so many products, so many brands and sub-species of those brands, that no consumer is safe from the bombardment of choice overload.
A huge variety of product offering doesn't aid consumers. It is insanity. From the vast array of athletic shoes to bagels to portable CD players to bottled water, there quickly becomes a point at which mega-choices, like mega-information, do not serve the consumer; they abuse him.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“It's not that you can't get things done with the use of a cell phone; indeed you can get a lot of things done. However, the nature of what you get done is highly skewed. Just as the man with only a hammer sees everything as nails, the incessant cell phone user accomplishes a variety of tasks, understandably enough, that accrue directly to having a cell phone.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“Computers thwart, contort, and befuddle us. We mess around with fonts, change screen backgrounds, slow down or increase mouse speed. We tweak and we piddle. We spend countless hours preparing PowerPoint slides that most people forget in seconds. We generate reports in duplicate and triplicate and then somw that end up serving only one function for most of the recipients - to collect dust.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“Soetsu Yanagi, in the "Unknown Craftsman", writes, "Man is most free when his tools are proportionate to his needs." For example, for optimal productivity, a carpenter needs woodworking tools and an environment conducive to his work, not a steam shovel or army tank.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“A study at Cornell University found that low-level noise both lowered job motivation and increased stress levels. It appears as well that an open-office type of environment can contribute to musculoskeletal problems such as a stiff back or tense neck and even heart disease due to increased levels of epinephrine, a stress hormone.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“When you don't have, or feel that you don't have, an extra moment to read philosophy, history, or science, when great literature, plays, and novels are as foreign to you as hieroglyphics, do you have any cahnce of seeing your work, career, or life in a new light? You might be doing well in the race, but it's the same race essentially down the same track with the same opponents that may prove to be less than sufficient in enabling you to get those kinds of things done that you want to have completed.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“When your brain is always engaged, when your neurons are always firing, when you find yourself in a continual mode of reacting and responding, instead of steering and directing, the best and brightest solutions that you are capable of producing rarely see the light of day.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“By some estimates, the data-storage curve is rocketing upward at the rate of 800 percent per year. Organizations are collecting so much data they're overwhelmed. Families are no different; we have more things on disk, more photos, more items stored than we'll ever have to allocate time for. "Since Kodachrome made way for jpeg, pictures accumulate on hard drives like wet leaves in a gutter." (Jim Lewis, author of "The King is Dead")”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“Once taken off one task without completing the transaction, the mind continues to seek closure. Fight to stay focused on the task at hand.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“The results are in and the cell phone has become the most isruptive aspect of work and everyday life. With more than four fifths of the population sporting these little gadgets, it's now taken as a given that any part of your day is subject to disruption.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“Over-communication at work can create a new level of tasks and responsibilities.”
― Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done

“Simplicity is within your grasp.”
― Jeff Davidson

“We are pummeled by innumerable rules, instructions, and laws that we are expected to know and heed; it’s no wonder that we feel overwhelmed and exhausted.”
― Jeff Davidson

“Complexity is a universal norm, while simplicity in your life is an achievable exception.”
― Jeff Davidson

“The infrastructure that holds society in place is based on increasingly sophisticated systems, technology, and complexity.”
― Jeff Davidson

“The intelligence with which engineers design a product dramatically impacts how easy or difficult it will be for the typical consumer to use it effectively.”
― Jeff Davidson, Dial It Down, Live It Up

“When facing a challenge, employ language that empowers you rather than leaves you in a quandary – rather than ask, "what can I do?", ask yourself "what will I do?”
― Jeff Davidson

“In his entire life, George Washington never spent a second watching CNN Headline News or making a Facebook post, and he had no Twitter followers!”
― Jeff Davidson

“More times than you probably care to admit, the situations you encounter in your life were created by you.
By making important choices, you learn to accept that there is nothing you must do. Everything is based on your choice.
By doing something — regardless of your mood — you're further ahead than if you did nothing.
If you allow piles to grow in your work area, as time passes, you will keep on creating the clutter.
The energy and anxiety that you invest in putting off an activity can consume more energy than is required to perform the activity”
― Jeff Davidson

“Keep technology in its place. There are some things that computers and other high-tech devices handle remarkably well. And there are some things that still go more smoothly with paper and pencil or similarly low-tech implements. Until voice recognition technology is part of all computers and until powerful computers are so tiny they can be built into the handle of your kitchen cabinet, it makes sense to keep your file of recipes right where they are in your card file box, not on a computer disk. Someday, home computers may be slick enough to produce recipes as quickly as you can say "chicken curry with noodles." For now, entering recipes into your computer and retrieving them each time you want to use them is definitely more bother than it's worth. Chances are, you won't use them.”
― Jeff Davidson, Simpler Living: A Back to Basics Guide to Cleaning, Furnishing, Storing, Decluttering, Streamlining, Organizing, and More

“Each of us was born in an era when complexity has become the hallmark of our existence.”
― Jeff Davidson

“When you encounter a problem, recognize that your solution likely is right alongside the problem itself.”
― Jeff Davidson

“With each passing second, more information becomes newly available than you could ingest, at typical viewing and reading speed, in the next eighty years.”
― Jeff Davidson

“Seek products designed with intelligence, and recognize that having fewer switches, buttons, or dials does not necessarily mean that the product is less sophisticated or offers fewer benefits or features. Quite the opposite might be true!”
― Jeff Davidson, Dial It Down, Live It Up

“No previous generation on earth has had more competing demands for its time and attention than this one.”
― Jeff Davidson

“Seeking a simpler life is not a 21st century phenomenon, nor a new-age fad, and it didn’t begin in California – the desire for simplicity has been evident for centuries.”
― Jeff Davidson

“Any product, service, or piece of technology that you acquire comes with instructions, options, and features that someone else – an engineer – designed before it ever made its way to you.”
― Jeff Davidson, Dial It Down, Live It Up