Have you ever caught yourself doing extra work that doesn’t actually move you closer to your goal? Perhaps you’re reformatting data that doesn’t need to be reformatted, or following steps in a process simply because “that’s how it’s always been done.” These unnecessary actions are productivity killers, silently draining your time and energy. The good news is that once you learn to eliminate the unnecessary, you’ll find yourself accomplishing more with less effort.
It’s Not Always Obvious
If you were trying to take a letter to the mailbox, would it make sense to walk a mile in the opposite direction first? Or if you were putting dishes in the dishwasher, would it make sense to completely hand wash them first?
Those are pretty stark examples. But sometimes we do things without considering whether or not there is unnecessary tasks in the mix.
What Is Productivity?
Productivity has two pillars: efficiency and effectiveness. Doing the right things in the best way.
If you are being efficient, but doing the wrong things, your results will not be meaningful.
If you are doing the right things, but putting in extra work that has little return on effort, you are slowing yourself down.
Why Efficiency Is Overlooked
Everyone automatically equates efficiency with productivity. But few people actually take a good look at their processes. This means that often times extra work creeps in without anyone really being aware of it.
Let’s look at an example: you are asked to pull sales numbers at work for a specific product line. The next month you are asked to do the report again, adding on a few more products. So you recreate your steps, and produce the report. It goes on for a few months, and a product is retired, but the sales reports are still required for that product because it is winding down. So it stays that way until one day you look at the report and realize you are pulling data for products that haven’t been available for months or years.
Not too efficient, but it crept in unnoticed.
How To Spot Unnecessary Steps
I am a big fan of process audits, particularly when it comes to anything we repeat on a regular basis.
To do a process audit, you look at each step and ask if this is the only way to do it, and if it is the best way to do it.
For example, you need to descale your coffee pot at home. As the first step, you have always ordered the expensive solution because that is what came with the machine, and this adds days onto a relatively short process. However, in looking at it again, you see that you can use plain vinegar, and this cuts your time (not to mention expense) way down.
Or perhaps you are looking at backing up your photos on your hard drive. You have always figured out which pictures haven’t been backed up based on the date, and then upload those to the cloud. A more efficient way might be to have backup software monitor the folder where you keep the pictures and back them up to the cloud automatically.
Designing An Efficient Process
Now that you know how to spot unnecessary steps, you also need to be aware of efficiency when you are doing something you know you will repeat.
The approach here is simply to write the steps down as you are doing them. That way you can turn them into an SOP, and you can also revisit the process to see if what you did in pursuit of getting to goal is the best way to approach it.
Maybe as you were putting together the company newsletter, you needed to collect information from four different people, all of whom sent you information in different formats. It worked for the first month, but for the second you decided to standardize the input into a Google Form, thereby eliminating the need for you to retype and reformat from email, word documents and other things.
In Conclusion
Productivity isn’t just about working hard – it’s about working smart by eliminating unnecessary steps that drain your time and energy. By conducting regular process audits and questioning whether each step is truly needed, you can identify inefficiencies that have crept into your routines. Whether you’re designing a new process or refining an existing one, the key is to focus on both effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing them in the best way). By eliminating the unnecessary, you’ll accomplish more meaningful results with less effort, transforming yourself into a more effective productivity agent.
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