The Efficiency Trap
Much of the material out there on getting things done focuses on doing more stuff in the available time. This isn’t always a good thing. You have to make sure you’re actually doing the right stuff. Another bogus assumption by holier-then-thou self-help-sperts is that you can choose to radically change your life right now, that there is no in between.
What scares me is that because of this people get scared away from change, they get scared away from risk and the get scared away from entrepreneurial behaviors because they see it as an all or nothing proposition. In our current pop-psychology we build the wall too high. In trying to paint a great picture and tell a compelling story we scare off the very audience that we profess to want to help.
On the first topic, efficiency, do you really want to do things faster? Why would you? You want to do things faster to create room in your life to do better things. Unfortunately people miss the nuances in this drive to efficiency. It can’t just be efficiency for efficiency’s sake.
Even if you are able to crush your way through your to-do list where does that put you at the end of your day? Do you now have an extra hour? What are you going to do with it? Are you going to watch reruns of Law and Order on Netflix or write the great American novel? If you can’t answer that question then why did you put the energy into finding another hour?
Unfortunately, I think most people embrace efficiency only so they can do more meaningless tasks. Come on, we all love our meaningless tasks. I get a big hit of happy chemicals when I see I’ve invested an hour cleaning my inbox down to zero. Yay! Really? That’s a bit like bailing the ocean isn’t it?
You need to look at your long term, I don’t want to use the word ‘goals’, but your long term purpose or desire. Where do you want to be in a year? 2 years? 5 years? Then you can back schedule some of those medium and longer term tasks into your day that support that view you’re trying to get to.
We all know the efficiency equation. You have to look at everything you do in a day for a week, log it. Look at each thing and ask, Should I be doing this at all? Then eliminate the stuff you shouldn’t. Look at the stuff that doesn’t require your special gifts. That stuff you outsource. Then you’re left with the value added stuff that you like and you’re good at. Do that stuff.
Taking it a step further, how do you take those things that require your special gift and that you love to do and franchise them? Can you create leverage or organization around those things? People always want to outsource their inbox, but maybe you should be building a franchised organization around your craft or your art. Pulling in people and creating leverage.
There I go, scaring you again.
Doesn’t if feel that no matter where you turn someone is holding up an example of some luminary rags-to-riches story, someone who radically changed their lives? Do you really have to radically change your lives to be happy? Do you really have to radically change your life to impact others?
No. You don’t.
You can make a difference in your world just by incrementally changing your attitude within your current frame of reference. You can think like a leader. You can act with an attitude of abundance. You can act like an entrepreneur.
Try it. Go into your 9-5 job and start doing random positive acts of entrepreneurialism. See what happens. Start coming up with better ideas that focus on longer term systemic change and not just fighting today’s fires. Come at it, not with the attitude that something is broken and need to be fixed. Come at it with the enthusiasm and positivity of the great opportunity and how you plan to start seizing it.
Use your mind as a lens. Don’t say “I’m not happy.” Or “I’m bored.” Instead focus your mind on the big, real opportunities in every mundane situation. Be the quiet voice of change in yourself, in your community, in your family and in your organization. Be the unstoppable, patient, happy momentum that steals the day from the grumpy and small minded.
Look at your task list and add a few things to each day that are not urgent but are important. Those things that don’t have to be done, but if they are done they will make a difference. Become known as the person who does these things, who shows up with these gifts.
That’s a gift. That’s a victory.
And as you start to get momentum who knows where it will go? Maybe you’ll see your chance for the big change.
You don’t have to quit your job. You don’t have to leave your family. You don’t have to make the big, radical change. You can make a difference in your world without becoming the change pariah. It’s in the little; things that you can make a difference.
Here is what I challenge you to do. Find a way to create 15 minutes in your day. Use that 15 minutes to work on your long term purpose. Write 500 words in that book, compose poetry, learn Mongolian, read the classics – I don’t care what it is but it shouldn’t involve FaceBook, YouTube or that thing you do that pays the bills.
Commit 15 minutes a day to something that is not urgent, but is important and long term enabling. See how that goes.