It’s the beginning of February and many small business owners are looking ahead (but not looking forward) to tax time and all that it entails. How well you have organized yourself and your business over the past year will show itself in the amount of time it takes to make sure you have all of your receipts and documents required to accomplish this.

This is where the difference between efficiency and busyness comes to light. Many of us are “busy” or so we say. Our calendar is packed full of meetings, our voicemail is full of messages that need our attention, our work is building up and it all needs to be done. We are actually busy being busy. When you look at the results that should be there, they are hard to find, if not non-existent. We aren’t effective at accomplishing our tasks, focusing on our work or prioritizing what needs to be done so we still have time for ourselves.

We feel hurried and rushed, as if we have no time to complete the most important things in our day, let alone get to those that aren’t as important or don’t have to do with work. While there will always be those projects that end up being more complicated than we expected, we’re wasting our time on the trivial rather than the most meaningful. Looking productive and being stressed out do not go hand in hand with efficiency.

If you’re efficient, you manage your time well, finish your tasks within a reasonable amount of time and are able to concentrate on what is most important to you at any given time of the day. Other demands that conflict with your responsibilities at the present time aren’t allowed to interfere, unless they’re emergencies. In order to be efficient, you have to be clear on your priorities and what is important to you. Your day has a specific purpose and you know what needs to be done to complete the most important tasks and still have time and energy left over for yourself.

Efficient people function at a higher level than busy people. They do things right the first time and make sure they are doing the right things, not those that waste their time. They’re well aware that the day can fly by and at the end of it there is nothing to show for the time spent on what appears to be work but is really just busyness. They value quality over quantity and eliminate tasks of little importance by either delegating them to someone else or grouping them with a similar set of tasks to save time.

Efficiency involves planning, organizing and maximizing time that would otherwise be wasted. Scheduling your day, focusing on each job that needs to be done and not allowing unimportant interruptions and distractions are part of efficient work strategies. Lifestyle changes have a large effect on just how efficient you can be each day. A well rested business owner who pay attention to their diet and how much exercise they get is usually much more efficient than one who sleeps few hours, lives on take-out food and spends their off hours laying on their couch.

The next time someone tells you how busy their life is, take it with a grain of salt. A closer look will show you that they may be busy running around, spending their time on trivial things but they probably aren’t accomplishing much at all.

The really idle man gets nowhere. The perpetually busy man does not get much further. ~ Sir Heneage Ogilvie

© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2015

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