Peter Drucker

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”

These quotes were made by Peter Drucker (1909-2005).

Peter Drucker

He was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.” He was also called a “Management guru“.  Interesting to know is maybe as well that he was influenced by John Meynard Keynes (the one we’re talking in Macro about) whose lectures he attended in Cambridge.

He advised big companies in management questions from New York over Frankfurt to Kyoto. (eg. “General Motors” in the 1940s). His strength was to think through complex cohesion and to find understandable answers to complicated questions.

Sleeping

“The bed is a bundle of paradoxes:  we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.” ~quoted by Charles Caleb Colton

“If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.” ~Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis

Well stastistically we sleep a third of our life, approx. 7,5 h per night as an adult. But how come that one sometimes feels as if he could sleep the whole day through as well? The American social psychologist James Maas introduced the idea of a “power nap” to avoid the weary feelin during the day. His idea is a short sleep (approx. 15- max. 30 min) which has to end before you enter the SWS (Slow Wave Sleep), or deep sleep. It makes you more alert and productive. It is very important to find out the best personal napping time, to foreclose feeling groggry after it.

Another very interesting article I recently read about sleeping was that scientists believe that the position in which we sleep tells something about our personality.

Mark Twain

” I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining but wants it back when it begins to rain.”

Mark Twain! These are the quotes of his which I like the best  It is unbelievable for me how he could make such statements around 100 years ago - and that I/one can still identify with those today.  These three statements express my thoughts in the past few months/weeks and it is unbelievable that they still suit a person’s thoughts today.

I came across them through my old boss at the awesome English Bookstore “Storytime  Books and Café” I used to work at. She mentioned the first saying about the education when I had to pay the needed uni books at her store, which where mega expensive even though I still got the staff discount - thanks :) It somehow sticked to my head and I was impressed by the coincidence that she cited Mark Twain, who exactly expressed my thoughts. Then I started researching him a bit more and came across even more quotes and facts I did’t know about him before.