Productivity: Efficiency and Effectiveness

Productivity is something more than putting all of your time and energy into work. Some people seem to think that working more to produce more is the best strategy to be productive, but they're wrong. There's a lot more to it than what most people realize.

Being effective and efficient is the key to productiveness. It's all about developing a strategy that will encompass whatever it is everybody else is doing. When you know the game in your workplace, you will know how to be more effective because you'll stop doing anything else that does not contribute to your output. As a result, when you know the right strategy, you will be more efficient as you'll be doing your work in less time.

We see martyrdom in the workplace so often, but do they really excel? What do these people get out of working long hours in the office, going overtime every night? They go home tired, burnt out and unable to enjoy the rest of what little time. These people spend so much unnecessary time and energy on their work, when they could be spending less and putting out more. They try to schedule everything in their lives around their work, and they rarely have time off. Time management is a thing of the past; it's for workers who haven't discovered the secret to the game yet. This is what separates productive people from mediocre ones.

Just because you're spending all day at the office doesn't mean you'll get things done. In fact, more often than not, very little work gets produced. In most cases, these people get so lost in what they need to do the job that they forget to do the job itself. For example, researching facts for an article is important, but you'll never get anything written down if all you do is research. Most of the time, you don't even need half the things you're researching! If you do know what you want to produce, you won't produce anything at all.

Efficiency and effectiveness need to go hand in hand. You need to do something in the shortest time possible while applying your knowledge in a way that will get you closer to what you want. This is productivity. Without one, you'll just be a regular working and you'll be wasting your time focusing on the things you don't need. Still, the most important part of the whole thing is to set your goals and make it clear to yourself (more than anything) what you really want to achieve.

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