What is Efficacy and Why Does it Matter?

What It’s About: There’s a lot of talk about efficacy these days. Of course, most of it is relative to the efficacy of vaccine trials during this current situation. According to Wikipedia, the word is normally used in pharmacology and medicine to refer to the maximum response achievable from a pharmaceutical drug in research settings. That is the definition of efficacy, “the ability to produce a desired or intended result.” 

Self-efficacy is somewhat different. Psychologist Albert Bandura has defined self-efficacy as one's belief in our ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task. One's sense of self-efficacy can play a major role in how one approaches life’s many challenges. 

So What?: I am a big fan of systems thinking. When one can see how things work systematically, the ability to drive forward progress increases. According to Bandura, a person’s attitudes, abilities, and cognitive skills comprise what is known as the self-system. This system plays a major role in how we perceive and behave in different situations. Self-efficacy is an essential part of our personal self-system framework.  

Now What?: We can use all this efficacy talk to be more thoughtful about developing more self-efficacy within ourselves. According to a recent Lifehack article, there are four key ways to do this: 

  1. Build One Success on Top of Another. All Successful People Started Out Small. 

  2. Observe the Endurance and Success of Other People.

  3. Surround Yourself With People Who Believe You Can Succeed. 

  4. Work Through Your Own Psychological Responses.

For more insight read the article. One of my mantras, as my followers know well, is about starting small and building on these successes. We are on a continuous life journey to intentionally build our self-development system, and I’m looking forward to efficacy becoming more accessible.

Think big, start small, act now, 

- Lorne 

One Millennial View: There’s that Henry Ford quote you see splattered all over Instagram memes, “whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” That’s self-efficacy, right? I suppose as assembly lines start re-opening, we can re-open our vocabulary a bit more too. 

- Garrett 

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis










































 

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