Be Effective, Not Efficient

How to really be productive and get stuff done

Have you ever finished a whole list of tasks but then realized at the end of the day that you didn’t actually achieve much? The reason why is probably that you were efficient but not effective.

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration.”

— Thomas A. Edison

Efficiency and effectiveness sound similar but actually have very different meanings. Efficiency is the ability to do tasks quickly regardless of whether or not they are important while effectiveness is the ability to choose and do the most relevant tasks to your goal. Efficiency enables you to do a task quickly even if that task is irrelevant to your goals while effectiveness helps you to achieve your goals by ensuring that your time is invested in only the most important tasks.

To use a car analogy, the speed of the car is like efficiency. It doesn’t matter how fast the car is travelling if it’s traveling in the wrong direction. The direction of the car is analogous to effectiveness. Traveling in the right direction and being effective ensures that waste as little time as possible.

Effectiveness is almost always better than efficiency. The art of effectiveness is avoiding useless work that shouldn’t be done in the first place. When you avoid useless work, you get to spend zero time on it with a minimal loss since it’s unimportant. No amount of efficiency increase can reduce the time taken for a task to zero. This is why it’s better to be effective than efficient.

How to Be More Effective

Have a Not To Do List

When planning your day, the most straightforward way to make sure you are working on useful tasks while avoiding worthless tasks which seem useful is to ask yourself which work is really essential and will really make an impact while labeling and writing down work that is not really productive such excessive email-checking.

In the ‘The Four Hour Workweek’, Tim Ferriss recommends creating a Not To Do List as well as a To Do List. A Not To Do list is helpful is because it makes you more aware of useless tasks. With a Not To Do list, you are able to see through fake work that seems like work.

Keep your To Do List as short as possible and order it from most important to least important so that you do the most important tasks first.

Avoid Perfectionism and Just Do It

It’s easy to carry out tasks which we want to do. The challenge is maintaining the same level of productivity for less attractive tasks. Usually, we know what we need to do each day, but sometimes avoid doing it in favor of less important, easier tasks. You could call this workcrastination — doing work but not actually doing the work that is really important. The workcrastinator can work incredibly efficiently and get tasks done quickly, but because he is working on the unimportant while avoiding the important, he ultimately won’t get nearly as much done as a more effective person.

The best way to avoid this problem is to avoid perfectionism and just do it. Fear of failure and not knowing what to do can prevent us from starting important tasks. We know the tasks are important and don’t want to mess up.

First of all, it’s important to realize that not doing a task is often just as bad as doing it badly, and even if you do end up making mistakes, you can always fix them.

The best way to beat workcrastination or any other form of procrastination is to just jump in, start the task and accept that you will probably make mistakes which can be fixed later.

Bring this mindset to each day and notice how much more you get done.

Motivation Follows Action

Conventional wisdom says that motivation precedes action. We say things to ourselves like, “I’ll start this task when I feel motivated to do it”. The truth is though, motivation rises and falls over time so you just have to accept that sometimes you will have to do tasks even when you are not motivated.

Once you start the task though, you will often find that your level of motivation increases as you make progress. The reality is that starting the task is the main hurdle to get past — starting the task is like a hurdle which once cleared, is followed by flat land. Once you start, you’ve usually passed most of the motivational friction and finishing the task won’t be nearly as difficult as you thought. Procrastination is often caused by the inability to start tasks. The workcrastinator will ‘start’ something other than the task such as checking email and feel like they are making progress. What’s actually happening is that the tasks that need to be done have still not been started and nothing of value is really being achieved.

When you are struggling to start a task, remember that starting is almost always the hardest part. You can even promise yourself that you can stop working once you start a task. Try this and you will find that you are often willing to continue working on the task.

Don’t Expect It To Be Easy

Many tasks (such as writing this article) are challenging even once you have started. Sometimes the work that is required to achieve your goals is easy, but usually it’s not.

The fact that your work is challenging is not necessarily bad. In fact, if work is challenging that’s usually a good sign. To improve and make progress, you have to do new things, get outside your comfort zone and occasionally fail.

The problem is not that an activity is challenging, it’s when we see that as a negative. The wrong approach is to start with the expectation that the activity you are doing will be easy. If you have this mindset, you will be surprised and possibly discouraged by how challenging it is.

A much better mindset is to not only expect the task to be challenging, but relish the challenge. Instead of thinking, “I have to do this hard task”, say to yourself, “I have an opportunity to improve and make progress”. Re-framing challenging activities in this way makes them more attractive. And when you find an activity attractive, you tend to do it more. You will tend to spend more time on the challenging activity resulting in more improvement and progress. It’s a win-win, you are happier now because of your positive attitude towards challenges and will be happier later as you make more progress.

Summary

• Productivity is the result of effectiveness which involves filtering out the most important tasks and doing them. Efficiency (doing tasks quickly) doesn’t necessarily lead to productivity because you could be spending your time on the wrong tasks.
• Keep your To Do lists as short as possible and do the most important tasks first. Have a Not To Do List to avoid work that is not truly important.
• Avoid perfectionism. Just do it and be willing to make mistakes. Realize that doing easy, fake work seems productive but really is not.
• Work now, and often motivation will follow. Starting is the hardest part.
• See challenges as opportunities to improve and progress. View them positively.