Efficiency

You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

-Sam Walton

Growing up, I thought raw intelligence led to success. It’s helpful, but it’s not the sole trait nor even the most important. You can be competent, disciplined, and even prioritize correctly, but if you’re inefficient, it doesn’t matter. I see it all the time at all levels. Efficiency is core to how much you can accomplish.

It takes me a few hours to write a well thought out essay. I know others who can do the same in an hour. There are others who spend weeks and iterate over a dozen drafts for a basic essay. I know CEOs who get an immeasurable amount of work done. I know other CEOs who when they’re concentrated on one task, they ignore all others to the chagrin of their team.

There are levels of efficiency. Similarly, we classify parts of our product as:

1. Functional,

2. Efficient,

3. Best in class, or

4. Best imaginable

There are those who play games to win and others who play games as completionists. Completionists do every side quest and unlock every secret. There are massive opportunity costs to being a completionist. To accomplish the best imaginable efficiency comes at the cost of not up-leveling efficiency in other aspects of life. But that’s a prioritization problem. The more common issue is that many people are barely functional in most areas.

Life still functions if you take three right turns instead of a left turn. It still gets you there, it’s just not the fastest way to do it. In design, there’s a concept of being good enough. Oftentimes, one needs to only be good enough, and then, there are diminishing returns. Learning to drift would be the best imaginable left turn, but taking a left turn is good enough.

Understand the basics of productivity– make lists, batch tasks, practice bad procrastination, time box. Use whatever hacks work for you, but at the end of the day, just get shit done. There are power laws in efficiency. If you want something done, give it to the busiest person in the room.

On the spectrum of efficiency, I’m far from optimal. But I love optimizing.

When I wake up and have a conference call, I take it while jumping on my trampoline. I brush my teeth while going pee. I clean my ears using one q-tip in each ear at the same time. When on calls, I perform little tasks— watering plants, answering emails, responding to texts, organizing. I do 1:1s while walking or working out. I delegate life admin tasks wherever possible. When a small decision needs to be made, I make it quickly and move on. I’ve seen elderly people take days to make a decision that should take minutes.

I was in a meeting with an important client along with members of my team. It was a multi-hour product walkthrough. Only one person needed to present part of the product at a time. While one of the product managers was presenting, my team members and I would listen and hear the client’s feedback. We slacked each other to make sure we gave the correct response. But there are parts of the presentation that just need to be shown and are self explanatory. 

During those times, myself and the product managers were doing other work. I’d send emails, respond to slacks, and edit documents. This allowed me to stay caught up on work and make sure the rest of the team stayed unblocked even though I was in a meeting.

A lot of business and managerial tasks are like playing hot potato. Don’t let the potato burn you. If someone needs your feedback, prioritize it as it’s blocking. Everyone should have at least a secondary task to work on while waiting for feedback, but their primary task is primary because it’s the most important. It’s contingent upon you to unblock them.

How can some people accomplish orders of magnitude more than others? Dragon energy helps, but it comes down to competence, discipline, prioritization, and efficiency.

The more we accomplish, the more we can impact the world. Efficiency leads to freedom.