Effectiveness vs Efficiency

Houston TX

Welcome friends and family! I’m starting this little blog for reasons mentioned below, but also to keep anyone who is interested up-to-date on my travels! A little boring right now, as I’m stuck in Houston, with no real assignment, just killing time until my Visa clears the Brazilian Consulate on May 7^th. Until then, I’ve completed one day of driver safety training and a week long mechanics class on Waukesha engines (one of the two primary engine brands we use in our company.) Currently I’m doing a 1 ½ week stint in the sales department trying to understand their jobs and role in our company. Obviously it’s been action-pack as I’ve had enough time to read 3 books this week and start a blog (not to mention the mindless hours of surfing the internet… I miss Brazil.)

It hasn’t been all bad though. I’ve gotten

to travel to Arkansas once and Tulsa twice to see the important people in my life. Nicole’s parents met my parents for the first time and things were splendid. I’m excited for Nicole to come to Brazil and visit me hopefully around the first week in June.

On my mind lately: I’m currently reading a book called The Four Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss. Though it sounds like a how-to guide on laziness, it is really about living your life to the fullest and more importantly, how to do that. The two primary vehicles he uses are; the 80/20 rule (where 80% of results come from 20% of the effort) and Parkinson’s Law (the task we work on will grow in complexity and importance). In essence, maximize your results while limiting wasted effort and setting close deadlines to force focus and eliminating unessential activity. One of the principles is not multitasking (older generation, here’s your validation). On the other hand, the older generation is a huge fan of the 9-5 workweek, which has fundamental flaws. How is it that the whole world needs 40 hrs a week during the 9am-5pm time frame to get the job done. We don’t actually need all those hours. We could do the actual work in less time. We just end up filling those hours with what Ferriss calls ‘Working for Work’s sake.’

The point in my opinion is the pursuit of happiness. Ferriss writes, “What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness… The opposite of love is indifference and the opposite of happiness is – here’s the clincher – boredom.” The goal isn’t to be inactive, the goal is happiness and therefore limiting boredom. I know from experience, you can easily work 40+ hours a week and be completely bored. This is not an efficiency book; you can be highly efficient at doing unimportant things, its more about being effective which is about making your dreams come true.

Well, I hope I’ve perked your intrigue. Who knows, maybe you’ll have a conversation about it with a friend or go out and read the book. In any case I do have one request. In effort to better live life to the fullest, in the comments section below please post one thing you have always wanted to do before you die. Thanks for reading! -CH

FUN FACT: The picture above is one I took of Rio de Janeiro at sunset as I was coming across the bay on a ferry.