Why Teodesk Is Not Productive?

It’s true, the goal of Teodesk isn’t to make you any more productive. On the other hand – what it aims to achieve is to make you and your work efficient.

Don’t get us wrong, both productivity and efficiency are legitimate business goals and neither should be ignored. Increasing them can make a company prosper and achieve great things.

If you’re wondering what the difference between the two is, you’re not alone. For the majority of people, being efficient and being productive are one and the same.

But, we’re here to make light of this mystery.

Productivity Versus Efficiency

Simply put, an explanation of productivity versus efficiency is the difference between quantity and quality. Businesses often measure productivity by output during comparable time periods.

Efficiency relates to the quality of your work, which might include creating output with less waste, using fewer resources or spending less money. Having this in mind, it reflects the company’s ability to achieve the best results with its available resources, and with no to minimum wastage of efforts and expenses.

When we talk about productivity, we more often than not see it as a measure of efficiency of a person, machine, factory or system in converting inputs into useful outputs. Productivity is calculated by dividing average output per period by the total costs that occurred or resources (capital, energy, material, personnel) consumed in that period.

How this impacts your work? 

When you emphasize the quantity aspect of productivity, such as by paying bonuses on amounts produced or sold, you might encourage employees to be less careful. This might not be a bad thing if your increased output outweighs the number of problems you have.

However, this is often not the case. When quantity is forcefully increased, the errors continue to pile on. There are more complaints, more refunds demanded and more headaches for the management.

If we focus on being efficient, we are more likely to avoid these issues.

 

Finding the Perfect balance

What it takes to balance those two (while riding a mono-cycle on a wire, during a snowstorm – as sometimes every job looks like) is planning and organizing carefully all the resources so that they are available whenever they’re needed.

Sam Ashe-Edmunds of Demand Media explains perfectly this conundrum in his  Business Chronicle blog post:

 

“It’s not always possible to achieve 100 percent quality at maximum productivity levels. Finding the right combination of productivity and efficiency helps you optimize your output while minimizing losses.”

 

AUTOMATING

First and ultimate rule to increasing efficiency is through automation. Just stop doing things manually, stop spending yours and your company’s time and money. We have been living in the 21^st century for far too long to still be doing things the old-fashioned way.

 

ORGANIZING

Next in line is a piece of universal advice: set a proper place for each of your things. And more importantly, keep them there.

Just think of all that time you wasted on chasing down lost or misplaced items. Socks, a document, receipts, keys, a document, lipstick, yet another document and so on…

These occurrences are very often a source of frustration. And we all know that frustration never gets you to the right place.

So, guess what? People get really efficient from being organized.

 

PLANNING

Next tip in line is to always have a short-term plan. If you don’t, the chances are you simply won’t get where you wanted to go.

When a team doesn’t have clear guidelines anything can happen. And by anything, we mean nothing good.

To this improvisation-friendly atmosphere, add just a little bit of someone’s impatience and a pinch of poor communication – and you will have incarnated the worst enemy of efficiency. Don’t let it happen to you. It takes time to do the homework and decipher the project’s moving line.  Don’t put on your little red dancing shoes just yet if you’re about to dance in the dark.

Sit, communicate and create a perfectly detailed project plan. Turn on the light in that ballroom and get yourself ready to enchant the prince himself.

 

Where does Teodesk fit in with all of this?

Teodesk helps you be efficient by saving the most valuable resource of all. Your time.

By having all of your information in one place, organized and transparent, the work you do won’t seem half as daunting as it did before. Your team will know what they need to do and when, and you will be able to monitor them without constantly having to check in.

There will be no more work e-mails asking you to send the same file again and again because it got lost somewhere. It’ll all be sorted and easily accessible.

Doing a report on an employee or on a project currently being done? Easy as pressing a button.

This leaves you with plenty of time for strategic thinking or time for a productive team meeting where you brainstorm and solve crucial problems. It can also make coming home early or catching up with old friends over a couple of beers something to look forward to, not just something to fantasize about.

 

Both productivity and efficiency should be a part of your workflow.

Combining the two provides you with time, expertise and discipline in order to handle distinct assignments. Balancing productivity and efficiency may seem troublesome at first, but once you find what works for you, certain tasks will stop being such a burden.

Everyday work life will be easier, less stressful and filled with exciting challenges instead of daunting tasks that keep piling on.

And hey, if you need any help achieving that, we’re always here for you!