[2021-04-27] Efficiency and effectiveness
Today, I came across excerpts I had captured in 2009 from Timothy Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. The book is about ruthlessly prioritizing the activities you spend your time on so that you can minimize work and maximize excitement. He defines excitement as "the more practical synonym for happiness" and a "cure-all" and advises that it's "what you should strive to chase."
Back in 2009, as the primary breadwinner of a family of four, I wasn't about to ditch my job, start an automated business and take off to Argentina to learn the tango. But I did think then, as I did today, that there was still something I could take from Ferriss' book.
Though much of what Ferriss advises was impractical in my career (check email only once a day and train your boss to accept this, screen incoming calls like everyone is a telemarketer, avoid meetings at all cost), I did agree with this point: "Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions."
Even now, when the demands on my time are greatly reduced, I find it easy to be busy while avoiding something hard. For example, I'll browse stories in my news feed rather than start my blog post, or I'll read a book rather than do research that will help me make decisions about my health. So I'm trying to be more conscious of what I'm spending my time on to ensure that I'm not simply avoiding tasks that are more challenging but also more important.
Ferriss also provides a helpful distinction between effectiveness and efficiency: "Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible." He continues: "What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things."
His last point is very powerful: no matter how efficient we are at a task, if it's the wrong task, we're wasting our time.
Ferriss suggests a number of questions that you can ask yourself to make sure that what you're doing is supportive of your goals:
- Am I being productive or just active?
- Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?
- What are the top-three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I've been productive?
- If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?
I'm always satisfied when I finish my daily post, but acknowledge that it can be difficult to produce the final product, particularly when I'm lazing on the couch reading the news.
I love the final excerpt that I noted from the book. Ferriss enumerates 13 slip-ups readers will make in pursuing the 4-hour workweek, the final one being "Ignoring the social rewards of life." The antidote, he says, is to "Surround yourself with smiling, positive people.... Happiness shared in the form of friendship and love is happiness multiplied."
I may never achieve a life of excitement or learn the tango in Argentina, but I can surround myself with friendship and love.
