Some thoughts about efficiency:
Being efficient doesn’t equate to being effective.
Trying to be efficient places your attention from doing to efficiency itself, and that’s not very efficient.
When inspiration strikes, you take action, you don’t act only when it’s convenient or necessarily when it’s scheduled.
Chasing efficiency implies rushing and rushing ruins accuracy of execution, which means you’re raising the odds of screwing up.
Even when efficiency succeeds, it leads to overuse and formularization, and soon stops being efficient.
When you’re too results-oriented, you battle with process instead of flowing (in ease) with it.
Striving for efficiency is often disappointing because efficiency is a race against time, a battle lost more often than not because it places expectations against reality.
Trying to be efficient is basically telling your brain that you’re hating what you’re doing and that’s not a wise way of doing anything.
All good things take time — great art, expressing originality, having meaningful relationships.
When people say they’re saving time by being efficient, they don’t realize that time can’t be saved, it can only be spent.
The effort to be efficient is often met with conflict from within, namely a battle with your intuition or higher intelligence.
The experience of time is relative; when things are painful or boring, it feels too long and slow, but when things are great, it moves too fast.
Efficiency is analytical and comparative rather than immersive; you’re always obsessed with tracking the activity rather than being directly engaged with it.
Efficiency is ultimately about greed and wanting more life by hoping to cut attention short which is ironical because attention is what life is.
Speed comes with skill, experience and patience — things that require time to acquire.
Efficiency aligns itself with ideas about the future and skips the present. It doesn’t understand or appreciate process so there’s no gratitude for circumstances or the craft.
Efficiency is mechanical; it objectifies things, actions and events rather than connecting with them.
Trying to be efficient, you easily lose sight of the big picture. It’s short-term thinking.
Rather than try to be efficient about a task, choose either to do it with attentiveness and appreciation or not do it at all. Afterall, anything worth doing is worth doing right.
Efficiency often conflicts with compassion; for example, giving time to others is a sign of love and generosity, but cutting others short demonstrates the exact opposite.
You can be efficient and still waste your time if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
Don’t dream of being fast, instead focus on being good.
Never forget that the very best things in life are both immeasurable and timeless.
Aiming for efficiency is a mostly futile endeavour. Good luck trying to be efficient with your artistic growth or in your relationships with people or that with spirituality/God.
A mind racing for the end soon realizes that life has been a blur, completely forgettable and over much too quickly.
“The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; the second worst enemy is total efficiency.” — Aldous Huxley, Writer