Common sense not common practice

made to believe that we are on the path to success. What guarantees success is not efficiency but effectiveness? What is the difference? Efficiency is acting in the most economical manner possible whereas effectiveness is doing those things that draw you closer to your goal. These are the issues this week’s guest writer on The Arena OZIAS MUCHERIWA tackles. This is not the first time to host him. Mozambique-based Ozias Mucheriwa is a motivational speaker and writer. He also writes from his website http://www.motivcenter.com/
THE things that lead to success are surprisingly easy to do but more astonishing is the fact that they are easy not to do.
Some would want to say that they are common sense, but I would submit to you that common sense being uncommon is consequently not common practice.
Most people including the writer suffer from failure to do important things simply because we find them easy not to do.
It is easy not to do regular exercise.
It is easy not to read and study the subjects that you really need in life and instead, watch television.
It is easy not to take action and lurk under the guise of tomorrow.
Ever heard the saying that says, “never mind, there is always a tomorrow?”
In fact tomorrow has been seen to be the most job-saving device on the planet.
It is easy to continue working hard without looking back to see if the way you are working is working for you.
Common sense says that if the way you are working is not working for you; find a way of working that works, but unfortunately, common sense is not common practice.
Many people will surely go through life crawling upon their hands and knees defeated, depleted and disappointed but they keep doing the things that plunged them into that situation and mourn that there is no way out.
Remember Albert Einstein saying, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
Sitting down for a few minutes to review can save many years of a humdrum of existence that disappoint and disillusion.
Check to see if your actions are paying off some dividends.
Perpetual performance without reviewing is the default mode of humanity but I challenge you to dare to be different.
Step up to the plate and take responsibility; take stock, sift through the clatter and take note of what is working and what is not.
Many of us get the same results after doing the same things and complain why it is so.
That behaviour has a special name which I will talk about.
Someone grows until age sixty doing the same things that are not producing success.
They blame it on their background, the ecology or the goddess of luck having an implacable spite against them.
In most cases it is simply a matter of not looking back to separate what is not working, from what produces the intended results.
Many times we are fooled by the word “efficiency”. Because we are working efficiently we are made to believe that we are on the path to success.
What guarantees success is not efficiency but effectiveness? What is the difference?
Efficiency is acting in the most economical manner possible, whereas effectiveness is doing those things that draw you closer to your goal.
When China saw that the communist-oriented economy is not going to be viable going forward, they abandoned it and captured capitalism.
Thirty years down the line, they have overtaken Japan as the second economic power house and are poised to make a double jump leap frog past the US in the near future.
It was easy not to change and maintain the status quo but it decided to review and make the necessary changes.
In 1960 South Korea was poorer than Ghana but they decided to change.
The result: they caught up with the rest of the world. Any nation, organisation, family or individual that sits down and look back to insist on a close scrutiny and an accurate discrimination into the actions that work and those that do not, will always move up and become like a giraffe in a herd of field mice.
When carrying a load, sometimes the answer is not in increasing the pace but in lightening the load, that it, doing away with those things that do not add value.
We call this “planned neglect.” When teaching the principles of time management, we recommend the use of “To do lists”.
But, having a “not to do list” can go a long way in complementing your “to do list”, thereby guaranteeing effectiveness.
This could mean doing away with some actions, habits, some behaviours that are of a self-destructive nature.
Habits like procrastination, self-defeating talk, self-pity and the like, all fall into this category.
One other disheartening fact is that when you finally manage to sit down and look at those things that did not work or are currently not working, you will notice that they took you time to perform.
In other words, they stole your time since they didn’t produce a return on the time you invested in doing them.
I would want you to imagine your destiny should you continue in those things for the next five, twenty and even forty years.
How much time of productive activity would have been lost?
On the other spectrum, you should not forget those actions that work. It therefore becomes incumbent upon you to cherish and continuously repeat them.
Sometimes we do things that work and pay off, but because of a lack of review, we stop doing those things and slip back into the default mode of complacency. Once complacency kicks in, mediocrity will be ready to creep in through the door.
One secret of success is, “Do what you have to do as quickly as you can, and then do what you want to do as long as you want.”
Many a time we want to do what we want to do and not what we need to do and as years go by the results become interesting.
What do you need to do now? Look back, do the needful and eliminate the unnecessary.
Ozias Mucheriwa can also be contacted on [email protected] or skype: ozymucheri.
l The Arena writer wishes all readers an Easter holiday, abundant with the Lord’s blessings.
He was crucified for that, and He rose from the dead so that we should live in abundance, both materially and spiritually.
It is also a time when we call upon our drivers to exercise extreme caution on our roads.
Driving should not be a licence to destroying livelihoods.
Yes, the roads are bad. Indeed, many people will be travelling to different parts of the country to see family, friends and relatives.
Some will be holidaying in tourist resources dotted around the country.
And yet others will be attending church conferences.
All these people should arrive safely, and also achieve their goals so that for the first time and onwards, we will start to boast about accident-free journeys, be it holiday time or any other day.
The recent campaign by Doctors against Traffic Accidents was not only a welcome move, but we should see it extending to all sectors, for apart from the loss of lives; traffic accidents are affecting our economy very badly.
We might not see it for now, but future generations will feel the needless loss of lives and resources.
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