Are Speed and Efficiency Synonymous?
Perhaps it's time to slow things down....
I walk slowly for my usual cup of coffee from my office to the kiosk close by. In my work environment everything needs to be turned around yesterday, so that walk for coffee is a time for reflection before I get consumed by the daily work demands. I unravel my knotty thoughts, work through tricky email replies, or, on this morning, just walk in open space letting my thoughts wander for 5 minutes.
That's when a work colleague walks briskly past me.
“Walking slowly, Richa. You should be moving more quickly given your workload.”
It annoys me, a lot. How does my walking speed reflect my efficiency, or lack of it?
Why have speed and efficiency become synonymous? I've been giving this some thought of late. I am more efficient when I do things slowly, as in thoughtfully, with more awareness. The task becomes interesting and engrossing when I move through it with attentiveness rather than turning it into a race to the end. The process itself becomes important.
I started my training as a lawyer at a time just before the onslaught of virtual libraries and software programmes that could spin out the case laws related to the subject you were researching in a matter of minutes. Now you can do all the research sitting at your desk and it is all quite neat and efficient. Before this era of efficiency, though, we had to go to physical libraries, find the reference books, comb through them to find the case laws and then read all of these to see if they were relevant. It was a slow process. It may sound tedious and a waste of time, but the quiet and the stillness of the library with rows upon rows of books, the weight and the smell of the old books in your hands, created its own sanctum. On certain days I would forget the time and become absorbed in the thinking of greater minds. It wasn’t just about finding the right answers in the shortest possible time. The research was a journey: an inner journey into my own thoughts. An invaluable process.
With the legal libraries going virtual, the information was available at my fingertips. I could sit at my desk and finish a week’s work in a day. No more treks to the old, sometimes musty libraries, no more trying to find forgotten case laws, lugging thick books around and reading through them. The information was now on my computer screen, and all I had to do was to flick between the ten tabs that were open on my screen to get my work done. All tremendously exciting. But now, I didn’t bump into a colleague on my way to the library, and I didn’t have the time to trundle off to get some lunch along the way and have a long discussion with my work colleague on the topic of research. And, in those long lunches and debates, learn to accept another person’s views, and form deep bonds of friendship. I became efficient working alone at my desk. The work remained absorbing. But was it still the same? Now I was sitting hunched over my desk, with my eyes squinting at a backlit screen for long stretches of period, flicking between many open tabs on the screen, with the mobile and emails pinging. In demanding more speed and efficiency from ourselves, did we create our own urgency and stress to everyday tasks? This unacknowledged stress accumulates over time and it leaves me thinking, did I lose the sense of learning, enjoyment and satisfaction that I drew from my work? Did I also close myself off from other thought processes?
If I were to draw a parallel, it is now like watching movies on Netflix. Earlier, you would have to plan to see a film in a cinema hall, you would call up your family and friends, make a plan, which would have been revised a million times to ensure all were happy. Find a means of transport to reach there on time, buy popcorn, settle down in your seats in the darkened hall with a sense of excitement and anticipation. Afterwards, there would be critiques and discussions on the film and everyone would have their views, whether you agreed or not. It would be a fun evening with people you enjoy spending time with, and a meaningful interaction. A process of accepting and relaxing.
Now I can sit on my sofa and watch everything-- very convenient and very efficient. But is it really fun? For me, on most days, Netflix is a means of escape from a long, tiring day. I flick through several channels, mostly do not find anything worth watching, and don’t remember what I was watching the evening before. There is no discussion, no anticipation. There is also no exploration, as I only watch what is available. It is a mechanical and solitary exercise. Quite boring.
I began to wonder, what have we lost by losing the slow and inefficient process?
There’s no denying that we live and work in a very fast paced world. A pace that builds its own stress. A day can be a race to the end to complete all the tasks on our to-do list. How can we slow it down? I was chatting with a colleague the other day. We agreed on how the things that helped us at work in stressful situations was the process of work. That is approaching work with a sense of exploration and curiosity towards an issue, and a sense of thrill when we found that we had learnt something new. How this process of finding a resolution made our work enjoyable and made our tasks purposeful. It kept our interest alive in everyday issues.
It created a slowness to a day that would have passed us by without us noticing it.
In our quest for efficiency, where are we hurrying to? To the next chore, the next task, crossing off these on our to-do list as we race through the day. What if we slowed the day down by approaching the same situation with a sense of exploration, curiosity and openness, and not as an attack on our nervous system? Would we be less stressed if we were slower, would our days be more enjoyable -- I wonder as I walk slowly to get my coffee.