Effort does not equal productivity

Article 1/6 from the "Work Smarter, Not Harder" series

My second boss in the Army when I was a young lieutenant used to lock the doors to the building while we were outside at final formation, usually around 5 pm. He wouldn’t even let us back in the building until our first meeting (5:30/6 am) the next day. This was early 2001, before the attacks. Laptops weren’t a thing, cell phones were still pretty new, and smart phones definitely were not in the hands of new college graduates. Therefore, once Chad locked the doors to the building, we lost access to our paper files, the six desktop computers in the office, and anything else we might need to do our administrative work.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, you can no longer lock someone out of their work. As a freelance contractor, I’m so happy for my handheld devices, the cloud, and everything else that makes virtual work possible. As a mom, wife, athlete, and overall type-A personality, I HATE that I can work 24/7…because I often try to do just that.

As I sit in my office pondering what I need to accomplish versus what I can do, I often find myself leaning into the menial task. I especially want to do things on my list that are easy…but they aren’t value add based on my current goals. That exact scenario is what drove me to write last week’s article, “Working Harder….but NOT Smarter?”.

Effort and productivity are often conflated, but they are distinctly different. While effort pertains to the amount of work or energy put into a task, productivity is about the effectiveness of that effort in achieving desirable outcomes. Notice the phrasing here… DESIRED outcomes. I can be extremely productive writing articles, but if my goal is to prepare for a new coaching client, I’ve been busy, but not productive.

How can you be more productive? Think about quality, efficiency, and innovation.