How to Avoid the Efficiency Trap

Many people fall into the efficiency trap every day. Are you one of them? For a long time, many people make the mistake of working their way through their daily to-do list and checking items off in a very efficient manner, mistakenly thinking that they are making an impact.

Before we go any further let's discuss the difference between EFFICIENCY and EFFECTIVENESS, many people think these terms are interchangeable, but they are not.

EFFICIENCY in simple terms is doing things right, quickly.  

EFFECTIVENESS is doing the right things, efficiently.  

Here's a little quote to help put this into context for you.

“You Can’t Be Effective Without Being Efficient,

But, You Can be Efficient Without Being Effective."

Paul Watts

You can be really efficient, but doing all the wrong things.

I was one of these people, until I discovered two tools which when combined were a game changer for me. I will share these tools with you and how to use them. The first tool was the Eisenhower Matrix which is a four quadrant tool, that categorizes tasks based on two criteria, the first is the IMPORTANCE and the second is URGENCY. The vertical axis represents Importance from Low to High and the horizontal axis represents Urgency from Low to High. All you need to do is make two decisions and you should be able to categorize your tasks.

But this is where I used to fall down, OK so now what. That's where the second tool comes in, the 4D's One Touch Approach. By applying the 4D's to these four quadrants, I was now able to assign an action to each priority level.

The upper right-hand quadrant is priority number one (P1), the upper left-hand quadrant is priority number two (P2), the lower right-hand quadrant is priority number three (P3), and the lower left-hand quadrant is priority number four (P4). This is how we prioritize tasks, Now let's apply the 4D’s approach to this chart. 

If the task is of high importance, and high urgency, then this task is a priority number one (P1). The first D is ‘Do it now.' If it is important and urgent, 'Do it now.'

If the task is of high importance, and low urgency, then this task is priority number two (P2). The second D is ‘Date Activate’ if it is important but not urgent then schedule a block of time in your calendar to deal with this task at a future time. 'Date Activate.'

If the task is of low importance, but high urgency then this task is priority number three (P3). The third D is ‘Delegate’ if you can, you should delegate this task to a lower authority, if at all possible, if you don't have anyone to delegate the task to, then you should only deal with these tasks when all of the days' P1 and P2 tasks are completed, not before.

Finally, if the task is of low importance and low urgency then this task is priority number four (P4), the fourth D, is ‘Delete.' If it's not important and it's not urgent, delete the task. Again if the task cannot be deleted then P4 tasks should not be started until all of the days' P1, P2 and P3 tasks have been completed.

The four-quadrant prioritization model, when combined with the 4D approach, is an excellent way of prioritizing your tasks and becoming more effective.

My favourite story of this tool is when my wife Dawn joined our business full time. Until that point Dawn had never worked in an office environment, she was a registered nurse in the UK. Now nurses are extremely effective and efficient, but the kind of administrative tasks that they complete are very different to the kind of tasks that a business person completes.

I remember getting home from work one evening and Dawn was sat there and she looked flustered, when I asked what was wrong she said that her to-do list was getting longer and longer and she was struggling to get to grips with it. She said that she felt like she was failing. Her note pad had almost 30 items on it. She was very upset.

I asked if she was open to some suggestions on how to prioritize her workload better and she said "Yes, please". I shared the Eisenhower Matrix and the 4D's approach with her.

The next day I got home from work and Dawn was sat with a huge grin of her face. I said "What's the matter with you? You look like the cat who got the cream." she laughed and shared with me that her day had been much better and that she had gotten all of the days P1 and P2 tasks completed as well as most of the P3 ones as well. She had even used different colours for the different priority levels.

I hope that you find these tools useful and that they have the same positive impact on you that they had on us.

If you have any other productivity hacks that you'd like to share with us, please do so in the comments. Thanks for reading.