Urtė Mikelevičiūtė
Nov 4 · 4 min read

Workaholics is so old-fashioned and how to be efficient in today‘s world

For a long time it was trendy to be „super busy, to have „loads of stuff to do“ and to have „no time for anything but work“ and I, actually, think it still exists in peoples‘ heads. I remember myself in 2012 when I just started my writing career, I composed an article on how “We All Have the Same Amount of Time”, but at that time the name of the article was slightly different – it sounded as like “The Philosophy when you are not drunk of wine”.

Even today I use this rule and nothing is going to change unless they will invent time machines. So -

  1. If everyone has the same amount of time that means it depends on the way we use it – you either waste your time or use it efficiently
  2. To waste your time doesn’t make sense, especially when consumption reached its peak and we are constantly promoting “zero waste” wave
  3. So, let’s get back to efficiency. You definitely know this word from entrepreneurship books. Efficiency – the ratio of the useful work performed in a process to the total energy expended or heat taken in (credits to my marketing lecturer). Therefore, the result depends on how we are going to allocate the resources that we have. Start with anything – projects, day schedule, sleep, daily diet, sex, taking a shower, reading a book or an article – you name it. Even scrolling on Instagram. I use this philosophy in my life: anything that I start doing has to lead to a certain result. You have to put enough effort, use your knowledge, put some time to it so it could bring the most beneficial result for me. I am talking about myself because this formula is the best that could work for me. You can’t apply it to everyone, because we are all different, anyway, I hope, that for some of you it will help to discover your efficiency formula after reading this.

Continuing on the final result – it has to be such a result that will satisfy you. In some cases, the product of your efforts might be well-being or a good rest or have good sex, another – to get a lot of money. What I want to say is that you cannot measure the quality and efficiency of your life with money, you can only measure it by work that you’ve done or the results that you got after putting efforts.

To conclude – you have to live and work smart. You have to live and work efficiently. That means you work when you have inspiration or your productivity is boosting instead of sitting for 5 hours in front of the screen of your laptop just because you decided that right now you have to complete this task and, in a meantime, while sitting and doing nothing make yourself 5 cups of coffee. You should rather focus as long as it takes to complete the task. I have to admit, it’s not easy for me to stay consistent with this plan because the majority of my clients or partners are hardly aware of such philosophy. Especially when they see my activity on Instagram. Nevertheless, you just have to understand that if you want to be productive you have to sustain a proper outlook and way of thinking to succeed in life. Efficiency has no direct correlation with the time you spend working.

Oh, and by the way – one last thing from my master thesis that I wrote in 2013 on the topic of “Qualities of Successful Freelancer”:

The scientific answer of what qualities you need to succeed in your activity are:

• Internal motivation

• Organizational skills

• Eagerness to complete the tasks

• Time management

• Information knowledge management

• Constant professional self-improvement

• Emotional stability

• Empathy

• Pro-activeness

• Planning skills

• Communicational skills

• Negotiation skills

Finally, my advice would be to absorb every part of the information that you need the most right now. And if you have any questions or you want to discuss on efficiency topic email me on worksmart@urteconsulting.com

Work&live smart

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