Many people try to be efficient. There are various methods for achieving high efficiency in life and work. Many sites exist that describe how to become more efficient and how good it is. Interestingly none of them describes drawbacks. Sites and books and seminars all provide tools but none warns human being about potential dangers of high efficiency.

Nothing in the life is absolutely black and white. There are always mid–tones and shadows. Efficiency also has its light and dark sides.

Personally I am a big fan of efficiency. I tried being efficient instinctively for most of my life and I do it consciously for past several years. Did it help me in my career and life? Certainly it did. Did it do anything bad? Hmmm. I never thought of that before. But last week I saw the comment in one of posts in in my blog. Jens wrote: “don't fall into the GTD (Getting Things Done) trap and efficiency hell”. This comment triggered something in my head and I decided to analyze both light and dark side of the personal efficiency.

What is personal efficiency?

Before we talk about bad and good sides, let's clarify what efficiency means in the context of this article. So what do I mean by “personal efficiency”?

Personal efficiency is a way to behave that allows to achieve more in the same time frame with less resources and better result.

Does this sound good? Yes, it does! It sounds good and attractive. Let's see some examples of personal efficiency.

Efficiency example: focusing

One of the major principles of being efficient is focusing. Focusing means that at one single period of time a person should be focused on a single task. It helps to finish the task faster and with a greater quality.

If the task is interrupted by another task, it is bad: thoughts are lost, the content of our working memory is overwritten by some other tasks. Coming back to the same task takes time to restore the content of the working memory, to get the full speed and concentration. Thus focusing is important for efficiency. Interruptions break efficiency.

There are many ways to avoid interruptions. Switching off mobile phone is one of them. Turning of e–mail and instant messengers is another. In other words, shutting down all disturbances helps to focus on the task and be efficient.

Efficiency example: planning

Parkinson's law says that a task will take all the time that is allocated to this task. I can add that it  takes nearly 10% more (depends on the person who does the task and his efficiency).

I have a workday planner, where I write tasks for current and next days. Right part is time schedule, left part contains goals for the day.

With this workday planner the time allocated for the work can be held under control. It helps to keep consequences of the Parksinson's law to the minimum. If I know I must accomplish this task in 2 hours, what choice do I have? I have to finish it in two hours, that's it! So I shutdown all disturbances and do the work.

Planning has an important constraint. It must be realistic. For planning to be realistic, people must be able to estimate time properly. Not everyone can do it from scratch but most people can learn how to do it.

Efficiency example: shopping

Efficiency is not only work–related, it also affects normal life. For example, this Friday I need to accomplish several tasks outside of my home:

  • Go to the bank and get Russian money (I plan to travel to Russia soon)
  • Bring my cat for vaccination to a veterinarian
  • Buy food for the weekend

If I do these tasks in the order I wrote them in the planner, this will cause more time. All these places are located in different areas of the city. It is efficient to see how can I visit them with the minimum fuel consumption, shortest time and guarantied result.

So I called the bank to reserve the money for me on Friday and agreed that they will keep these money for the whole day. I can come any time from 9:00 till 17:00. It gives me a lot of time freedom with the bank visit.

There are two veterinarians near each other, so I will definitely catch one of them. Their phone numbers are not in the phone book, so I could not call them. I go to them first. If they are not there, I will return again after doing other tasks.

The food shop is very far from to other places, so I plan visit it last. It will also save frozen fish from unfreezing.

In case if I have to wait for a veterinarian, I have my iPhone with headphone and an educational audio book to listen.

It is a simple planning but it helps achieve tasks better and faster.

Why personal efficiency is good?

The examples above show why personal efficiency is good. Basically it helps to achieve tasks better, faster and with less resources. It makes more time available for other activities. The more efficient I am in my work, the more I can enjoy books or play with kids.

Efficiency makes people more organized. It reduces clatter, forces to get rid of all unused goods and keep the house clean. It is good and efficient.

Business and correspondence gain a lot from personal efficiency. When everything is highly organized it helps to find information quickly, process it better and respond faster. Response become clear and cause much less questions.

Personal efficiency saves money. For example, it forces me to keep the house well maintained. When the house is well maintained, it needs less maintenance. Sounds absurd but it is true. By doing prophylactic work during last summer I reduce damage and costly repairs after the winter season. It is efficient! Another money saving: by rerouting my shopping path I am able to save on fuel costs and buy in a cheaper store. It is double efficient!

Personal efficiency helps to become a better professional. When a person tries to be efficient in everything, it immediately makes the person to act more efficient at his work. As a result, the efficient person becomes an expert in much shorter time than many others. Experts are paid better and can enjoy more of the life.

Why and how personal efficiency can become bad?

The problems due to personal efficiency start to appear when people become too efficient or when they become obsessed with efficiency.

The more efficient the person gets, the more he sees how inefficient are other people. When it comes to some critical amount, the efficient person starts trying to make less efficient persons to be more efficient. This is where it all starts to break.

If the person is efficient, he must live with the fact that other people may be less efficient or inefficient at all. It is sometimes hard to see that people do something in much longer way than they could or should. A simple example of that can be see in mailing lists. Every day a question of “How do I xyz?” pops up. Every day such question can be answered by the first result in Google search for the corresponding search term. It takes seconds to type the term into the search box and get the result. It takes some minutes to read, apply and test the solution. But yet many people fail to do it. Inefficiency of this approach makes efficient people shudder.

This is how efficiency becomes a demon: it makes efficient people feel bad about inefficient people. And worse: the felling is itself is inefficient, which makes efficient people feel bad about himself being inefficient. It may become an obsession and mental problem. It is a big danger of being efficient!

The more this obsession possesses the person, the more inefficiency the person sees around. The more unhappy he becomes. This is a path to the dark side of the efficiency.

Fortunately, it is possible to recognize symptoms and stop in the right place and time. Just let people be what they are. If the person is efficient, it is good. If not, it is just as it is. Efficient people can help inefficient people by showing them how to approach their target in a better way. This is good, non–offending way to make everyone happy and raise common efficiency.

So if you are efficient, avoid the dark side. People are what they are. Just live with it and life will be better.

Thanks!

Thanks to Jens for inspiring me to write this article.