Why you should make it your habit to work efficiently

In this post I explain why it is so important to work efficiently and why efficiency has value for all aspects of your life. There is a lot of benefit in making it your habit to think and be efficient. I also describe why it doesn’t mean that you have to enslave yourself by trying to be efficient in life. It actually means quite the opposite.

Choices we make

I strongly believe that our habits ultimately determine who we are. You may think “Nonsense, I have certain habits because of the person who I am”. True, probably uncounted times you have heard someone justifying bad habits as give by nature.

“Well, I am born a slob. Can’t help it”.

Does that mean this guy is unable to ever clean anything up? Do you really think?  Well I don’t. Unless this person has a serious mental or physical problem of course. So let’s say our slob has some incentive to clean his room, car, desk, or whatever, that makes it worth for him to do it. Punishment otherwise would be one option, but we want to stay positive and assume for example someone paid his all-included cable fees as long as the apartment is impeccably clean. In other words someone offered him something that makes it worth for the slob to spend the energy for keeping everything tidy.

If you visited him now you would not think he was unable to keep his apartment clean. Obviously he is not.  Although it may be in his nature to do otherwise he makes the active choice to be different. That is what distinguishes us from animals. Millenniums ago man made the choice against his nature not to be afraid of the fire but to control it. See, where this choice has gotten us.

I am also pretty sure no baby is born with the need to brush her teeth, even more so considering she doesn’t even have any. However, most of us wouldn’t go to bed without dutifully brushing day in and day out.

Obviously, good habits can be built over time.

Work efficiently – live happy

The most basic definition of efficiency describes it as the extent to which any resource is well used for its intended purpose.

In the business world the ultimate resource is money or currency, which can be easily traded against other resources. By working for financial compensation we trade our time against money.  This is part of our culture and there is nothing wrong with it. Generally speaking we actually spend time for the  purpose of receiving financial compensation. Logically, the less time we spend to earn the same amount of money the better.  That is not a new revelation is it?

(more…)