Did you know that you can be the most efficient person in the world but be completely ineffective? Both efficiency and effectiveness are important, and they work best when used together.

Efficiency is the action of doing a certain process in a way that best uses all available resources, and eliminates friction and conflict. Being efficient means that you do all of your work in the most streamlined manner, and you make best use of the time, money, skills, and resources available to you.

Effectiveness is the quality of being useful and productive. If someone says that you are effective, it means that you do what it takes to accomplish a specific desire or goal, even if you do it the hard way.

Being efficient without being effective is not good, because it doesn't matter how well you do something if it serves no purpose! A good example of this would be sharpening two hundred brand-new pencils using a sophisticated machine that automates the process, but you really only needed three pencils.

Conversely, being effective without being efficient is also not good, although it isn't altogether bad. If it takes you three hours to build a model airplane, but it should have only taken you one hour, that's not efficient, but it is effective because you got the job done.

So the best thing is to combine efficiency with effectiveness, which means to do things that are beneficial and useful in a streamlined way and in the shortest amount of time. Think about your day-to-day duties, and consider how you can be both efficient and effective.