The Joy Of Missing Out By Tonya DaltonSample

We need to change the way we think about being productive. We believe that we need to be efficient, to try to get as many tasks done in as little time as possible. We cram our day full with one task after the other in a mad dash to win the day. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all seen the clickbait articles promising you can write a year’s worth of blog content in three days or fooling you into believing you can write a book in a week.

Hurry, hurry, rush, rush. No time for lunch. No time to stop. Quickly moving from one task to the next with the goal of checking off as many tasks from our list as we can in as little time as possible. Being efficient. 

Are we stopping to ask ourselves, though, if those tasks need to be done at all? Are those things we are hurrying to do really important? Or are we just mindlessly rushing through our to-do list, pinballing from one item to the next, exhausting ourselves? This is why we slip into bed and feel as though we didn’t do enough or get enough done, that we weren’t good enough even when we skipped lunch and did five tasks at the same time. Enough.

We are so busy working to be efficient that we don’t have the time to catch our breath and ask ourselves the most important question of all: Why? Why are these tasks on our list? Why do they need to be done? Why are we killing ourselves to do it all?

Productivity isn’t about being efficient—it’s not about filling our day with tasks to quickly check off. It’s about being effective and asking yourself if those tasks need to be done at all. I want to remind you: productivity is not getting more done—it’s focusing on what matters most.

Dishwashers are efficient; refrigerators are efficient. They are working hard with the least amount of resources and effort. And that is possible because they are machines—machines designed to do one thing over and over again: dishwashers clean plates, and refrigerators keep things cool. 

Unfortunately, when people focus on being efficient, the resource we target is time. We fail to realize that being efficient is about getting things done; being effective is getting what’s important done. There’s a big difference.