As weird as it may sound, I am honestly the type of person who likes to reminisce on learning memories—those embarrassing, blush-inducing, sometimes painful moments that have very deep moral lessons. And last night, I was up to it again. I was brought back to my junior year in college, when being stressed was considered new and cool, and cutting class was the solution to problems. Back then, I had a very, very , very serious professor who never smiled in class. She was known to ask one question to all her classes every start of the school year. The question was, “What’s the difference between efficiency and effectiveness?”. Sadly, at least in my book, no one ever got to answer correctly. Apparently, my junior year was to be my lucky year—I was picked to answer the dreaded question.

Last night, as I forced myself to sleep, the same question kept running through my mind.
“What’s the difference between efficiency and effectiveness?”

So today, to further remind myself of that lesson, I made it a point to pay Google a visit, and I chanced upon the very answer that my professor told me when I failed to answer her:

Efficiency means doing things right; Effectiveness means doing the right things. Confusing?

No, it’s actually very simple. The defining factor is how the outputs are done. For example, in a call center environment, the output of being efficient is the number of customer service calls taken at day’s end. Meanwhile, the output of being effective is the number of customers who are satisfied with the service rendered at the end of the day.

In life and in work, there is a very thin line on being effective and being efficient. However, we can all be efficient and effective—it’s all in the matter of keeping your mind clear of cluttered thoughts that you achieve this. With that in mind, and proper time management, you can finish more tasks in a day and satisfy your clients as well as your boss.