Emily Articulated: Efficiency, connection

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

What if efficiency sits at one end of a long spectrum — our ability to perform tasks or produce results with the least waste of time, resources or energy? We know this end well. It is the engine of productivity, the means by which we squeeze the most out of ourselves, our days and our work. We use it to assess whether we are good at something. Often, we use it to assess whether we are good at life.

We answer, “Did you have a good day?” with, “Yeah, I got a lot done,” as though moving efficiently from one task to the next is what makes a day good.

Perhaps our devotion to efficiency is a side effect of capitalism. Or perhaps the seed was planted much earlier, inherited from our ancestors. Those who worked hardest, saved the most, planned ahead and prepared for scarcity were often the ones who survived. Maybe that instinct helped create the system we now live within — a system that took our impulse toward efficiency and transformed it into a moral virtue.

But what if that long spectrum has efficiency on one side and “connection” on the other? What do we lose as we push ourselves toward greater and greater efficiency? What do we trade when we optimize our lives around productivity?

I took Adderall for a brief period in college. I consider myself to have a relatively mild case of ADHD. I can function well enough while still being plagued by many of its classic pitfalls — leaving my keys in strange places, interrupting people because I’m afraid I’ll lose my train of thought, responding to text messages in my head while forgetting to respond in real life.

The first day I took the medication, my brain locked into focus. It was as though an aperture had closed around my life, narrowing until only the task in front of me remained.

Do other people’s brains really work this way? 

I studied for hours without distraction. I wasn’t derailed by a conversation happening across the room or by an open browser tab waiting to transport me into another dimension.

I completed tedious tasks I had been postponing for months. I finally took the bag of clothes to Goodwill. I mailed the overdue bill that had been sitting in my car’s console for weeks. Then I went home and cleaned my room. My motivation seemed endless. I had never been so efficient.

After taking the medication for a while, however, I began to recognize a cost — and not just that of fulfilling my prescription. I became less interested in the long, winding conversations I used to fall into, too eager to return to all that I was busy getting done. I no longer stopped to draw the leaf that looked like a three-legged dog. I didn’t take the long way home simply because I liked my playlist too much to stop before the final song.

In my newfound efficiency, I was losing a sense of connection: to other people, to my surroundings and to myself. 

My experience is not universal. For many people, medication creates the clarity and capacity that make connection possible. But, for me, it provided a brief encounter with an intensified version of the value our culture already prizes most.

Because connection is not efficient. It requires time and space, and the messy, slow details that help us see ourselves in one another. Or in our surroundings.

We already seem to understand this instinctively. When we want to reconnect, we often remove ourselves from places where efficiency is expected of us. We take a vacation from work or spend a weekend in the woods. We cook slowly over camp stoves, read books and play cards for no reason other than enjoyment. We put ourselves somewhere that forces us to slow down until we finally have enough space to hear one another and relish our company and surroundings.

A well-functioning society needs producers — people who naturally organize, build and get things done. But it also needs thinkers, wanderers, slow movers and connectors. Instead, we have treated productivity as the primary measure of a person’s value, even when their gifts lie elsewhere. We reward it, require it and rarely acknowledge its cost.

Now, it is easier than ever to make ourselves more efficient. We have shortcuts, cheat codes, life hacks, automation and tools capable of producing in seconds what once took hours. Using them is understandable, especially when the tasks of life consume so much of our time that becoming more efficient can give some of it back.

But every shortcut deserves a second question: What does this make possible, and what might it remove? Buying it online might mean missing bumping into a friend you haven’t seen in ages. Auto-generating the email could remove the idea sparked by considering the person who will receive it. Taking the shortcut might mean sacrificing the part of you that still wants to learn how to do it yourself.

Not every task needs to be slow or meaningful. Efficiency is useful, and sometimes necessary (the bill does, in fact, need to be mailed). But it shouldn’t be the standard by which we measure a life. Sometimes, we can take the meeting over coffee. Reject the auto-generated response. Take the long route with the cracks in the concrete that look like a tapestry. Not all the time. But definitely, sometimes.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.