Manage the Intangible-Time: Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

Managing the Intangible – Time: Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

 Stop and think about it; few things are as valuable as “time”.  One can achieve great success, fortune, friendship, and love but time rules all of these. We control our achievements in life.  We can expand them or reduce them. We can set our sights on earning more money or connecting with others and expand our circle of those closest to us.  But time, is time. We simply cannot make more of it than there is. Each of us has a finite amount of it and its value is ever increasing. The good news is in spite of its illusiveness, time can still be managed. We can choose to see time as a controllable commodity and live our lives according to that assumption. This is one of the secrets of successful people ‑ they work at shaping those things which others think are uncontrollable. There are a number of ways to manage our time.  Deciding to be Efficient verses Effective is one of them. EFFICIENT vs. EFFECTIVE Efficiency means doing things right. Effectiveness means doing the right things. Working efficiently is doing things with the least amount of wasted effort. Efficiency gets you from point A to point B via a straight line. Inefficiency goes in circles. Effectiveness means doing the things that yield results. Many people, when learning about time management, ask the question, “Which should I work on first, efficiency or effectiveness?”  In theory and practice, the best answer is to improve your effectiveness first. It’s much better to aim your sights at the result than to worry about the process. Too often we get bogged down in the means and lose sight of the end.