Are You Busy or Productive?

Self-help marketing seems to constantly talk about ways to be more productive and stay busy working on yourself, your family and your business.  They frequently mention the need to increase efficiency so that you get more done in the day.

These are well-intentioned pieces of advice, but they can become over-whelming very quickly if you don’t know what to work on and what is going to move you closer to your goal in the best way possible. 

One aspect to consider is the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.  Efficiency is when you are achieving maximum productivity.  This sounds great and many people mistakenly think that they want to increase their efficiency to improve themselves.  However, one can be efficient at doing things that don’t matter and do not advance us at all.  I am sure many people are very efficient at scrolling their social media feeds, scanning websites they like and responding to DMs, but these probably will not help us achieve our goals.

Effectiveness is when we do something that helps us achieve a worthwhile objective.  Doing some marketing for our business, calling clients and closing sales are effective things that help us achieve more and grow.  If you are effective, you are making progress rather than just being busy.

So, to determine where you should focus your time, look at activities that advance you towards your goal and make you more productive.  Strive to make these the majority of your activities while minimizing busy work that can be delegated or even done away with altogether.  Often just doing the same amount of work with this new focus will make a huge difference.

If you concentrate on productivity and being effective and eliminate all other activities as much as possible, your results will increase dramatically while your workload may actually stay the same.