Motivation to expend effort is usually related to the expected outcomes.   There is usually a reason to act and logically the benefits in doing so favour the action.

The effort/benefit analysis is most interesting when the measure of success is more subjective than objective.  Or to use common business case terminology, intangible versus tangible.

I don’t have time

A common explanation, I often hear, for not spending effort on certain tasks is “I don’t have time”.  Most of the time this is because the intangible benefit is percieved as low.

Sadly, this is probably not the case.  An example of this is, “I don’t have time to show them how, I’ll just fix it myself. ” The immediate benefit of providing training is not obvious.

In the long run, correcting the root cause (training) rather than repeatedly fixing the issue, ultimately improves quality, effort, personal satisfaction and a host of other attributes over the long run.

Best of all, the benefits achieved by this upfront training effort are both repeatable and sustainable.  Unfortunately this is not an easy metric to measure and has a subjective component to the measure of it’s value.

Think about it

On the next occassion “I don’t have time” pops into your mind as a reason not to take a particular action, ask yourself “Do you have time not to?”.

Basically, in the long run, will not dealing with this issue now demand a lot more time and effort. The key here is to give full consideration to possible intangible benefits before deciding not to act.