Productive, efficient or effective?
Posted on January 13, 2016 by Guy Ardito, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.
Forget about "how much" you're getting done! Focus on what advances your goals and how you can be better at that.
Do you want to get more done?
Entrepreneurs, moms and everyone in between seems to be obsessed with productivity and getting more done. There’s even a best-selling book called “Getting Things Done!”.
But is productivity the right thing to be focusing on?
You probably have actual goals, like growing a business or enjoying your family, that are the origin of all your tasks but all to often drop out of focus and we miss the forest for the trees.
So often we’re very present to everything we believe needs to get done or maybe “should” be done. But, out lives have become so busy, even cluttered, that there’s rarely a sense of relaxation or satisfaction. There’s just MORE to get done!
Constantly feeling that there’s always more to get is mentally and physically exhausting, and over time can lead to us breaking down, getting less done, making mistakes, and even anxiety and depression.
We tend to think of productivity in terms of efficiency. That is, how can minimize the time it takes to do any given task and how can we optimize the use of our time.
I’d like to offer a different perspective.
Effectiveness is a measure of how good a job we’re doing at accomplishing what we’re really trying to accomplish.
Many, many clients I speak with are very efficient and productive but NOT very effective. That is, they’re very busy and get a lot done but rarely if ever feel like they’re close to their real goals, much less actually achieving them.
That’s pretty far from “success”.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pay attention to your effectiveness.
Make sure that what you’re working on is actually material to your goals, and measure how long those tasks are taking you.
When you eliminate inappropriate tasks and optimizing or delegating the ones which do move your business forward you’ll experience both greater success and more free time to enjoy it.
