Imagine someone who is deeply efficient:
Their life is full of the best sorts of habits. They always take a break on Wednesday afternoon (unless there’s a crisis) and play a game of tennis or go swimming. They always get to their desk by 8.30; they always send polite thank you messages when people have been especially helpful or made a big effort. They always take time to fix the main outline of a document before elaborating the details. They always read through messages to check for silly spelling or content errors before sending. They always file important documents as soon as they get them or as soon as they are finished with them. They have set days when they clean up all their files.
We’ve got a tendency to see this as a personality type. We imagine this person who was always like this; that at kindergarten they always took their left shoe off before their right shoe; that they are maybe sometimes a bit admirable (their working life does seem more tranquil) but also somewhat freakish. You can’t learn from them, you can only watch and wonder.
In fact, human beings are generally very good at acquiring habits. It’s just that various cultural forces have conspired to make habit formation look like an unimpressive, unexciting undertaking.
How To make efficiency a habit:
- Have a higher opinion of habits
- Set a time
- Someone checks up
All well and good, but as Nassim Taleb would say, don’t confuse efficiency with effectiveness. There is such a thing as over-optimization, after all.