“Organization is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.”

— A.A. Milne

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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A.A. Milne 169

British author 1882–1956

Barbara Park (1947–2013) American juvenile author

Source: Rosie Swanson: Fourth-Grade Geek for President

“You can't be a philosopher and an activist. If you do, you get all mixed up.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: F.N. D'Alession. " Philosopher, reformer Mortimer Adler, father of 'Great Books' program, dies at 98 http://lubbockonline.com/stories/062901/upd_075-4286.shtml#.VVHE0_ntmko." at lubbockonline.com, June 29, 2001.

“There is no point in prioritizing doing your job when your organization faces being defunded in less than three months’ time if you don’t do something else: you do what’s necessary in order to ensure your organization survives, then you get back to work.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

This is how the iron law of bureaucracy installs itself at the heart of an institution. Most of the activities of any bureaucracy are devoted not to the organization’s ostensible goals, but to ensuring that the organization survives: because if they aren’t, the bureaucracy has a life expectancy measured in days before some idiot decision maker decides that if it’s no use to them they can make political hay by destroying it. It’s no consolation that some time later someone will realize that an organization was needed to carry out the original organization’s task, so a replacement is created: you still lost your job and the task went undone. The only sure way forward is to build an agency that looks to its own survival before it looks to its mission statement. Just another example of evolution in action.
Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 16, “Democracy in Action” (pp. 311-312)

“The mind is always asking you to do something over again, something you have already done so many times before. And every time you see that by doing it nothing is achieved. What else can madness be?”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Misattributed

“If everything you do is in order to do something else, when do you ever get to the end of it all?”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: The "Wind on Fire" Trilogy (2000-2003), Firesong (Book 3), p. 170

“It doesn't matter what you do… so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“Your values have to be hierarchically organized with something absolute at the top, because otherwise they do nothing but war. You have to organize your values hierarchically or else you stay confused. This is true if you're an individual and it's true if you're a state. If you don't know what the next thing you should do is, then there are fifty things you should do. Then, how are you doing to do any of them. You can't. You have to prioritize. Something has to be above something else. It has to be arranged in a hierarchy for it not to be chaotic. So there is some principle at the top of the hierarchy.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

“Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to see something you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow it up, explore around it, and before you know it, something worth thinking about to occupy your mind.”

Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) scientist and inventor known for his work on the telephone

A Treasury of Inspirational Thoughts (2004) by S.P. Sharma, p. 41.
Disputed

“You should watch when you talk to young men about responsibility. They're so thrilled about it. It just blows me away. Really?! That's what the counter-culture is? Grow up and do something useful. "Really? I can do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before."”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Rights, rights, rights, rights… Jesus! It's appalling. People have had enough of that. And they better have, because it's a non-productive mode of being. Responsibility, man: that's where the meaning in life is.
Other

“When you have something to do, do it. When you have nothing to do, sleep.”

Charles Sheffield book Resurgence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 4, “Sleepless in Miranda Port” (p. 33)

“Organization is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.”

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A.A. Milne 169

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