Efficient or effective?

Which is more important: efficiency or effectiveness?

Efficiency (and productivity) is the poster child of progress in the business world.

But what about effectiveness?

Efficient is elegant, until it isn’t. We see this in code, when developers use short function names that nobody can understand in the spirit of efficient load times (every letter counts!) We see this in companies, when shared calendars sacrifice effective days for efficient ones (when trivial meetings are deemed more important than empty time for strategic thinking).

Effective is elegant, if you plan on having humans be involved. We see this in code, when it’s written for humans to easily understand and enjoy using (so they can continue to understand and use it, which ironically reduces code bloat). We see this in companies, when people who care are given time to be effective (who appear on the surface to be working less, yet get significantly more done).

Efficient is much more popular. It feels like work, even when it’s merely a place for procrastination to hide.

You can choose instead to be effective, if you’re okay with removing all of the hiding places.