Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Efficiency


Staying current with technology is one of the delights of my work.  The holy grail of technology for me is efficiency; how can I do what needs to be done faster, without compromising accuracy.  New software or upgrades are always exciting to me because of the possibility they hold for improvement.  Literally I’m looking for fewer keystrokes per task, among other things. 
 
This mentality started for me years ago as a mother of two young children; being at work meant being away from them and although I was confident in our childcare arrangement, I really missed them.  I trained myself to be more efficient simply for the joy of being home sooner.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that I could never go back to anything less than total concentration while at the office; it became a habit that has made work extremely interesting and fast paced for me no matter where I go.  

I am objective oriented not time oriented.    I am constantly assessing what needs to be done by when and marking tasks off my checklists; when objectives are reached I know I’m done and I fly out of the office.  Being objective oriented also means I simply can’t leave the office until I’m done with what I need to do, even if that means things have not gone as expected and I’m staying until 8 pm to resolve it.  That still happens now and then, but it is definitely not the norm.  

My unflagging pursuit of efficiency, which I achieve primarily through maximizing the use of technology, has had so many personal benefits that I can’t imagine working any other way.  The silver lining is that I am not a workaholic – I have developed many interests outside of my professional life simply because I’ve given myself permission to leave the office when I’m done, not when the clock reaches a certain time.