A component of being efficient is the feeling of laziness. Why, what are you if you’ve nothing to do? Say you plan to clean up the house and get all your errands run throughout the day. 2 o’clock rolls around and you’re done left to stare into the void and start drinking wine. My modern sensibilities often direct me towards media. Many I’m sure play video games or build ships in bottles.
For me, efficiency is about awareness. I can peak into a million different futures depending on how I decide to spend my time. I can glimpse my half-assed effort engaging in things “for the sake of it,” or I can pick the ideal when my focus and intention are harnessed correctly.
This means, while I got fucked with my contract during the coffee kiosk times, my response should not be to become a better lawyer than the one I consulted. If I genuinely care to be even marginally healthy and informed on too many TV shows, it’s just dumb not to watch them while I’m on a treadmill or exercise bike. If I can read a comic in 12 minutes, I should own a tablet that doesn’t take 2 minutes of loading/freezing for each one in order to power through hundreds of back issues. Or maybe it’s alcohol! Why sip a shitty beer for $5 unable to get drunk, when I can buy a handle for $15 and car bar? It makes being the first ones to show up trying to avoid the cover charge a more fun drunkenly infused time.
Oddly enough, I’ve been criticized for trying to be efficient. I’m “holding us back” by car-baring as if the handle came with a set of handcuffs. As if anyone likes to spend more than they have to in failing to reach the desired effect. My impression, your attitude and lack of perspective is holding you back. I was making an offer; please feel free to reject it.
Less specifically, criticism comes in the form of “well, why don’t you learn it yourself?” I’m trying to have a website built by the world’s busiest web developer. I’ve made several statements about the work I’ll be able to do and expansions I’d like to roll out that have all proven fruitless. So, in the intervening weeks, the advice is to get my Master’s degree in open source mapping programs? I’m not exaggerating, this is how people approach advising about programming because places like Codecademy and Udemy made it seem like it’s just that easy.
I think it’s a rather destructive idea to always think there’s something to do. It’s a distracting one that helps remove your mind from what’s going wrong. Say you built a building and your boss said, “You should always be building. A. B. B!” The power is still running to the tools. You’re balanced precariously on a high ledge. You pack layer after layer of spackle and other shit that walls consist of on. It’s dangerous, dumb, and a waste.
My current trapping is figuring out how not to fall prey to dangerous and dumb wastes of time and resources. I’m failing pretty hardcore, but luckily I’m pretty good with money and patience. There’s probably another way to phrase that more accurately because I definitely can blow money and fucking hate waiting for anything, but my life doesn’t reflect that of someone you’d think struggled with those things.
Gaining perspective is a good thing, but there’s purposeful and not ways to do it. I don’t read because there are words on a page that desperately need to be in my head. I’m usually reading so I can better argue. Just because there’s a book I thought was cool that’s calling my name as I write this doesn’t mean I’ll get the most out of it because I break down and finish it in the next few hours. I hate working out for a week or two just to get into a study where I need to keep my blood work even. No matter how much I think about getting in better shape, until I don’t rely on my muscles to not be in constant repair mode, it’s an unrealistic goal I can only inefficiently pick at. If I can’t practice the ten instruments I’ve bought over the last few months for roommate, neighbor, or sleeping through the day related reasons, I’m not going refer to myself as a “multi-instrumentalist” who’s “passionate” about music. If an old movie kind of sucks or has subtitles, or maybe a lecturer talks slow as shit, I’ll watch the video at 1.5 to 2x the speed. That’s right I even try to kill time efficiently.
I guess I just wanted to state once again that I’m stuck. I suppose I feel the stuck so loud again because I tend to feel unstuck after I complete a study. I buy things that have sat in my Amazon wish list for years. I schedule myself to do things or join groups that carry fees around town. I get the most painful kind of excitement in making $500 payments on things like my website or in service to some other entrepreneurial idea. And then I subject myself to the mercy and time management skills of the rest of the world. It rarely goes well, and they stick me back in my place.
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