Why Do We Have To Be So Efficient?
Imagine what life might be like with no one endlessly yammering on about maximizing your time.
“The trail was designed to have no end, a wild place on which to be comfortably lost for as long as one desired.”— Ben Montgomery, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk
Good things take time to do or make or finish. Good things like art, ideas, and the planting of a halfway decent garden take hard work and patience.
In this age of ultra-productivity, technology holds the threat and promise of getting us to the end without bothering to go through the important steps of the journey. This is an empty, pointless endeavor. Some people are in the business of optimizing every moment of their waking lives. I’m not one of them.
I like a slow burn. I like a meandering trail. I like to let the hours and days and weeks trickle by without worrying too much about what I have or haven’t accomplished. I like to get things done, but I’m okay with doing them slowly. After all, faster isn’t always better.
Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us of this when describing the purpose of nuts (the kind you find in trees) in her luminous book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. She writes:
