Efficiency VS Effectiveness: Why Choosing What You Work On Is More Important Than Doing It Well

I've been stuck in a rut for years now. I am a workaholic with big dreams but no results.

I've always been the person who loves to work on their own projects. Since I was 18 years old, I have always had some passion project that I was working on. I spent hours each day at cafes doing something - usually "self-studying".

I am 24 years old now and from all this work, I have received no fame, no money, nothing at all.

This is because I was doing low leverage tasks, tasks that bared no large impact on my life and on my future or on my goals.

I felt productive (in motion, busy everyday), but the truth is there was no effectiveness in the things that I did. I was just being busy, buzzing about madly yet yielding no honey.

So what was the problem?

Being efficient without regards to effectiveness is the default state of the universe.

We spend more time optimizing than contemplating whether or not we should even do the task in the first place.

We like to put up a front showing everyone how busy we are - so we look productive and receive validation.

We don't measure twice and cut once, because we think the upfront mental cost is not worth it.

We don't like to upfront our mental resources because we feel like this is not being productive. However, in the long-term, deciding whether or not the action is worth taking is more important than doing it. This is because of the opportunity cost. If we choose wrongly, then we will exert all our energy doing what does not help us at the expense of not achieving our dreams.

The task that you choose matters more than how you do any given task.

So choose the thing that will have the most impact on your life and your progress.

For example, attracting followers on social media through short form content probably yields better results than hand writing this article... haha

Learning the 1000 key words in a language leave you able to communicate well, but learning 5000 random obscure words will leave you illiterate.

The what matters more than the how.

Don't engage in productivity theatre - doing things that can pass to others and yourself as something productive. "Look at how busy I am."

Don't mistake motion for progress. Just because I feel busy doesn't mean I am making any meaningful progress on my goals. (Sadly this is how it is. xD)

Solution: have a system to choose the highest leverage task.

To snowball your way into long term success.

Otherwise you will be flailing around, mimicking other people, and that will end up leading you into conflicting directions.

Think like this:

• Views goals/projects as experiments.
• View them in the short run, 3 months.
• Choose the ones "that develop and deepen skills or relationships the most" This way even if they fail by external measures you still gain the long term benefit.

If these improved skills and relationships persist after the project fails, this will yield to better success in the long term. Inverse pyrrhic victory. A loss that is a win.

This also acts as semantic insurance against the psychological distress of "failure". Because this way no failure is a failure if it gave you the skills and experience for your long-term project.

For example: Podcasting is as a way to improve my ability to ask questions, formulate and articulate my thoughts, reduce my verbal ticks, and to refine my ability to speak well. It also acts as a portfolio of something I've done. So even if the podcast never takes off, is never exposed to a large amount of people, never gains me large amounts of money or fame, it is still a massive success because of the skills that I have built up along the way.

So choose projects based on this potential.