Being Inefficient is Good For You... Here’s Why

I recently read an article that told me how I could save up to an hour a week by doing dishes and loading the dishwasher faster. A similar one invited me to batch my time by cooking all my meals for the week in a single night.

There’s just one problem– I actually enjoy those things. I like cooking and I actually find doing the dishes cathartic and meditative.

So why would I want to do them less?

Our culture is obsessed with efficiency. Apparently, we need to optimize every part of our life and every action to clear up more time so we can… I don’t know, work more? Produce more? Or be more useful to people?

As someone who is incredibly structured with my time, I think about this a lot. Of course I want to be more efficient with my time.

But I don’t want to be more efficient in the kitchen. I like the feeling of chopping vegetables after a long day. I like making the whole house smell good and having friends over to share the food. I don’t feel like doing things slowly or mindfully is wasted time.

There are no articles about how to play all my music for the week in one night. Or how to use my time dancing with my kids more efficiently. I’ve never read anything about how to turn a 2 hour meal with a friend into only 20 minutes.

If I’m doing an activity where I can find flow, that I enjoy, why would I want to be more efficient?

We need to rethink efficiency.

Not everything has to be about taking less time, getting right to the work, batching all of my time. Especially when it comes to relationships and partnerships.

At work, when we treat every meeting like its only purpose is to get through the agenda, we miss opportunities to connect as people. When 9-5 is just about productivity, we lose a feeling of collaboration. When our day is back-to-back meetings, we forfeit a chance to build trust.

So many of us are burning out right now for so many reasons. Working virtually has meant that we’ve lost the few minutes of transition time to walk to the conference room with a colleague and check in about how we’re feeling. The minutes in the room before everyone gets there to share what we’re looking forward to this weekend. Or an idea that might be irrelevant, but was our our mind.

We don’t have the direct awareness of each other’s body language or facial reactions during those meetings nor do we have the time afterwards to check in with each other– “I noticed you made a face when I presented this idea, can you share with me privately what you thought about it?”

It’s not efficient to spend a meeting where we were supposed to discuss hiring procedure or quarterly goals talking about the tension that was in the room during our morning standup. But we’re navigating complex relationships with a group of people. Those kinds of “inefficiencies” actually help the team work better. Clearing the air gets the gunk out of the machine and help everything run better.

It doesn’t always seem efficient to talk about our weekends or spend time telling jokes. But being human and connecting with people we work with is– counter to our own beliefs and intuitions– not always about the work.

Overcommunicating is not derailing. Connecting person-to-person IS the work. Getting to know each other is. Sharing feelings, stories, and wacky ideas is saving time. Cutting the BS is better than cutting to the chase.

In a virtual environment especially, working in a team requires building in time for what may feel like inefficiency, but actually are building better teams.

So Clear the air. Name the elephants. And don’t rush.

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Caveday is a company aimed at improving your relationship to work. We write regular posts on Medium and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.

Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.