The Art of Efficiency: How to Do One Thing at a Time Energy levels rise and dip every 90 minutes, here is how to make the most of your time.

We live in an age when we work more hours and feel more stress trying to get more done. Technology, meant to simplify our lives, saps our attention and steals our time. Has the need for a more efficient operation ever been greater?

Thankfully, we can learn to become more efficient at work, individually and collectively. Management consultants and business professors have long debated the relative merits (and even the definition) of efficiency as it pertains to the business world. In highly simplified terms, efficiency concerns the cost of input for the output produced--in other words, the best use of resources and the least waste of time and effort.

One of the areas where efficiency can be optimized is the work force, through increasing individual productivity--defined as the amount of work (products produced, customers served) an employee handles in a given time.