Several years ago, a new map app burst onto the navigational scene. Waze was David against a Google Maps Goliath.
Waze’s advantage was that it was more efficient. It would take the shortcuts and side streets that made you feel like a New York cabbie.
This advantage was also the downside.
Every time you used Waze you were guaranteed to have at least one terrible left turn across four lanes of traffic on the busiest street in the city. Preferably during rush hour.
But the reward was clear: shave 2 minutes off your trip.
Efficiency is a key ideal at almost any job, though perhaps we can blame Henry Ford for its current level of pervasiveness. More work, less time, more money, boom.
We carry this penchant for efficiency from work into our daily lives without much thought.
But efficiency comes at a cost.
So many wonderful things in life aren’t efficient at all. Things like sunsets and long walks and flowers and lazy mornings in bed.
Then there’s the stress. Is saving 2 minutes worth the time spent playing a real-life game of Frogger?
Life isn’t meant to be efficient.
Efficiency is great for an assembly line but exhausting in real life. We just don’t always notice when it shows up in the wrong places.
And oddly enough, sometimes when you’re waiting for that left turn, you take more time than if you’d just gone the usual route…
To being better without optimizing the joy out of life,
Elizabeth