Efficiency & Human Connection
Why we pursue efficiency and how it affects our relationships
As we all struggle to to live our lives to their fullest potential, we get sucked into a lifestyle of productivity, efficiency, and busy schedules. We want to do it all, have it all, live it all. So we try to master our time and become efficient with our calendars––down to the minute. And yet, are we finding meaning on our paths of efficiency?
There are endless books and articles that list ways we can become more efficient in our lives. A quick Google search will give you thousands of options:
8 Things Really Efficient People Do
10 Effective Strategies for Boosting Your Efficiency & Productivity
The Art of Efficiency: How to Do One Thing at a Time
In this introductory article, we’ll briefly examine
• The definition of efficiency: what is and is not efficient
• Why do we pursue efficiency? Is it what we really want?
• How does efficiency affect human connection––the thing that matters most to us?
What is and isn’t efficient
A basic definition of efficient is:
Achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense
It’s a simple physics concept: the result (output) of your efforts should be equal or greater than your investment (input). It’s about the relationship between input and output. The energy and effort you put into something should yield results of equal or greater value. What is the best investment for your resources of time, thought, work, and love?
Efficiency is not:
• Being busy and over-scheduling. You may start off feeling extremely productive as you check off a long to-do list, but, over time, you’ll burn out––burnout is not the desired result (output). Studies show that rest is necessary throughout our workdays. Consider the length of your to-do list.
• Multitasking. We often mistake multitasking as a good use of time, but I think we’ve arrived at a place in our culture where we at least cognitively recognize the disaster of trying to do too much at once––actually simplifying and doing one task at a time is easier said than done. Be careful when you think that “hitting two birds with one stone” will maximize your efficiency.
• Overburdening yourself with more than you can handle. There is a time and a season for everything––if you try to cram all of your goals into one day, one week, one season, how realistic are you being?
Efficiency is:
• Completing one task at a time––giving all your time and thought to the task at hand. Most of our tasks throughout the day are quite simple. If we can remove distractions, it will take less effort.
• Simplicity. There is a lot of technology meant to make us more productive and efficient with our time. For most of us, our daily tasks are quite simple. We produce our work and we communicate. It’s not complicated.
Why Efficiency?
The writer and farmer Wendell Berry explains why we are all both nurturers and exploiters within our culture, and he uses the miner and the farmer to describe the difference between these characteristics:
I conceive a strip miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health––his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible.
If we are all searching for meaning in our lives, it seems that we are all looking to work well and make a living. We easily get pulled into making the most bang for our buck (and time). Why do we wish to be efficient? What are our goals? Perhaps we do want to make more money and be more productive.
It might be helpful to know why exactly your goal is efficiency rather than care/nurturing. Or can these ideals work together? Can you find ways to be efficient and productive while displaying nurturing characteristics?
Efficiency & Human Connection
Perhaps as we tackle life one task, one person at a time, we become more present and more care-ful with our time and our relationships. Perhaps as we mind each other and our goals, taking time to do one thing at a time we become both efficient and nurturing.
If we are trying to listen to someone while completing something on our to-do list, we might think we are being efficient. But, in reality, both the work and the person––and, ultimately, ourselves––are suffering. The output is a sloppy job and disconnection.
What would happen to our productivity and our connections if we truly focused on one thing at a time? What would happen if when a friend came to us with a question, we stopped what we were doing and fully listened? What would happen if we asked for our co-worker to come back in 30 minutes after you finished a report? The work would get done, and you would find time to really connect.
What if we were all simply more care-ful? Efficiency and nurturing can live side by side in a healthy rhythm of productivity and rest, connection and solitude.
Anne Marie Vivienne