Hal Varian Quotes

If your desk isn't cluttered, you probably aren't doing your job.

We all know the place you're in has a big impact on how you feel. How you feel has an impact on the quality of work. Why wouldn't we put a lot of effort into making the place we work as efficient and productive and pleasant as possible?

Productivity is driven at the enterprise level. Better wages, better performing workplaces, are driven at the workplace level.

Once you explore life outside of work, it becomes addictive. The less you work, the less you want to work. At first, the odd afternoon off seems like a fantastic luxury. Before long, you are opting for a four-day week. Then a four-day week becomes an intolerable demand on your time, so you find a way of moving to a three-day week.

Time flies like an arrow - but fruit flies like a banana.

It’s really very hard to tell people to think at work but not at home.

It's easy to forget how little strategic thinking ever gets done in the day. Judging by the ideas generated there, our beds have more of a right to be called our offices than our offices.

I realized that being that No. 1 on the call sheet sets the tone. That knowledge, it's important to me that everyone - not just actors, not just myself, but everyone - have a workplace that they enjoy, where they feel respected, that they have creative input, and that they feel is a place that they're excited to go to work.

It's very important to have a good group of people that get along well, where the people come in to work and do it in a happy way, that they enjoy being at the club.

More efficient workers are always in an employer's best interest.

Sometimes you have long work days. Sometimes you have to be on the road a lot. But when you're home, be home.

CEOs the world over are fond of pointing to their workforce and saying "Our people are our greatest asset." And yet today, only two out of ten people think their assets are being well used at work.

My imagination? No, I don't think it's VIVID at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed...extentions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're SMIRKING. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?

You know Alou's name spelled backwards is Uola? That sounds like a first name, Uola.

I wish the first word I ever said was the word "quote", so right before I die I could say "unquote".

Much of the world's work, it has been said, is done by men who do not feel quite well. Marx is a case in point.

Smart hiring managers in the modern world should be asking, “How long can you concentrate on a task before you have to take a break?” I wonder how many of them do?

When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language.

In the doggie dictionary, under "bow wow" it says, "See "arf arf.""

I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning.

I think that's what goes wrong in a lot of people's careers, so many people are afraid to say, "This person has a problem" or "This person maybe shouldn't do this" because they're afraid of losing their jobs.

A company is people … employees want to know… am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really need to feel wanted.

If drumsticks are for playing drums, you would think that breadsticks would be for playing bread, wouldn't you? "Would you like some breadsticks?" "No, thank you, I don't play bread. I play drums. Perhaps I'll have a drum roll."

I think my biggest career mistake has been taking on too much. And I think this is kind of - I think it's related to the Internet world, where you're always multitasking and you have a million windows open and you feel like you can do a lot at the same time.

Forget socialism, capitalism, just-in-time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest ... concentrate on building organizations that accomplish that most difficult of all challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning.