Stop Trying to be Productive

Yep. I just said that.

Don’t stop believing

Don’t stop ‘till you get enough

Don’t stop, move it, move it

But STOP trying to be productive. Productivity is the enemy.

What?!

Productivity is about output. Working more, longer, harder.

Productivity is about quantity.

I want YOU to be Efficient. Efficiency is about quality.

These 2 words have been overused and often confused. Productivity measures output over time and efficiency measures input versus output.

Take household chores for example. Ugh.

On your “day off” you would be productive if you loaded and ran the dishwasher, washed a load of clothes and cleaned the bathroom.

Before you pat yourself on the back….how did you attack this list?

One at a time = productive. I mean, you got a lot done.

Did you start the laundry, the load and run the disher, clean the bathroom while everything was washing = efficient.

You accomplished the same amount of work but in the efficiency example you used less time, you let other tools (washer and dishwasher) work for you while you did the task (bathroom) that could not be automated.

If you did these tasks one at a time, you would have spent more time producing the same results.

Let’s look at another example. Client Onboarding.

It’s Monday and you have 10 new clients. There are emails to be sent, information to request and payments to invoice.

Productive = sending 10 emails, 10 requests for information and 10 requests for payments. Oh yeah, plus the other stuff you have to do on any given day.

Efficient = You have a system that puts your new clients in your email manager, which automatically triggers 10 personalized emails to go out, link to the request for information form and the payment link. All of that happens before you get to the office. Now you have 5+ hours to spend on something else.

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