What type of person do you want to be?
Productivity will almost always sacrifice quality over quantity, but effectiveness creates things that matter.
Yesterday, I was not productive.
I began my day tinkering on my website. There was an issue, I noticed, with the featured images of my blog posts looking a little pixelated. I needed to finish writing a post to stay on track for my content calendar, but this seemed like a minor issue I could quickly resolve.
An hour later, my website was broken.
By broken, I mean none of the images on my site would load. Where there was supposed to be an image – whether it was in a blog post, or my logo, or on the homepage – was an empty little box, taunting me.
Frustrated, I deleted my website’s theme and started from scratch. I spent an entire day on this one unplanned and completely avoidable issue.
By 10:30 PM I had a new website up and running. (I should mention at one point during the day my 2-year-old found a jar of Vaseline and covered himself in it. Not relevant, but it was that kind of day.)
Did I finish writing that post I was supposed to write? Nope. Was it a productive day? Absolutely not.
And yet, I’m not even mad, because sometimes productivity isn’t the end goal – it’s effectiveness.
Productivity versus effectiveness
What exactly makes effectiveness different than productivity?
Both are essentially a ratio of output versus input.
To be productive, one must yield higher output than the input required to produce said output. For example, a writer might spend an entire year self-publishing 12 Kindle books. 12 books for one year’s worth of work is a productive writer.
But are they an effective writer? Most likely not.
Effectiveness, on the other hand, is more concerned with the quality of the output, no matter the quantity of input.
J.R.R. Tolkien took 17 years to write The Lord of the Rings after publishing The Hobbit. Not to take a crack at self-publishing, but I think it’s safe to say Tolkien was a much more effective writer.
Productivity will almost always sacrifice quality over quantity, but effectiveness creates things that matter.
How to be more effective
Productivity plays an integral role in economics. Part of the reason why starvation has dropped significantly over the past century is that humans figured out how to mass-produce and distribute food.
However, on an individual basis, productivity looks like someone who’s busy making stuff but for no particular reason.
We’re all craftsmen in some way. Whether you are a writer, or an artisan candle maker, or an entrepreneur, or a parent, you want to create something of value. Something you’ll be proud of to leave behind when you die.
This is where effectiveness comes into play.
If you want to create things that matter, you have to expend vast amounts of energy to make it.
Lin-Manuel Miranda took 7 years to write Hamilton: The Musical. Jeff Bezos took a decade to turn an online book store into a behemoth. Rome, as the saying goes, took more than a day to build.
To be more effective you need to show up and fight off the temptation to create the quick and easy. Instead, believe in your legacy, believe what you are creating matters.
Patience is the key to effectiveness.
The effective consumer
Effectiveness doesn’t only apply to creating things.
When I hear people brag about reading one book a week (or a day), I question whether they are learning anything at all. Sure, they are productive readers, but are they effective readers?
In order to learn and understand something new, we have to go deep and spend time on the subject. Reading one book in a week about black holes doesn’t make you the next Stephen Hawking.
Effective consumers understand this. They deliberately and slowly consume material to become better humans, not just tick off another box on their reading checklist.
The same applies to food.
Effective eaters know how to consume the right balance and quantities of food to hit their personal fitness goals. They don’t look for the fad diets or the single-pill solutions, they put in the effort to eat right.
I can keep listing off examples, but the premise is always the same: Effective consumption is the act of carefully selecting the things in your life that have the greatest impact on your well-being.
What type of person do you want to be?
I love Twitter but I also hate Twitter.
Sometimes, all I want to do is check in on my friends and see how they are doing. But does that happen? No. Instead, I’m bombarded with quick takes, weird memes, long threads, trends, and deeply philosophical brand accounts.
I understand that Twitter is the digital town square. It’s a place you can show up, say a few words, and leave.
But it’s not a place I always want to be, because, in the end, it’s a place where those who shout the loudest win. It takes some digging to find the gems.
This is all to say, what type of person do you want to be?
Do you want to be the person who speaks a lot but says nothing at all? Do you want to be the busy employee who’s never promoted? Do you want to be the learner with a well-stocked bookshelf but with little knowledge?
There are days I fall for the productivity paradox. I try to create as much as I can because it feels like I’m falling behind. But, in the long run, it matters hardly at all.
In my attempt to be productive, I produce very little.
Strive to be the person who sees the long road ahead. Tinker on the tiny bits that most people overlook in their haste. Be effective, not productive.
