Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.

Cast as a mock “rule” of productivity, the line uses a deadpan paradox to champion basic self-care over hustle. Billings’s humor turns on the literal-minded logic: if work must happen before breakfast, the solution is simply to redefine the order—eat first—thereby protecting a small daily pleasure and bodily need. Beneath the joke is a critique of overwork and a preference for practical comfort, suggesting that efficiency and virtue are often invoked to justify needless deprivation. The aphorism’s staying power comes from its simplicity: it reframes urgency as negotiable and elevates nourishment (and by extension rest and routine) as a prerequisite for good work.