An old dog teaching me new tricks
Taffy, our 15-year-old lemon beagle, has always loved food.
For most beagle owners, this is no surprise, of course. The meme “I see you have food, I also like food” is accurate.
Taffy still loves food, but she's an old lady now
No longer is she in the kitchen from across the house in 5.4 seconds when she hears the refrigerator door open. It takes her some time to stand up with those old legs of hers, stretch out, and make her way there.
This morning, I fried some eggs, brought them to the kitchen table, and started eating them.
I was about halfway through eating the eggs when Taffy walked leisurely into the kitchen, and lay on the floor next to my feet.
I then put the plate with the egg scraps down on the floor, like she knew I would.
Taffy is deliberate now
Taffy no longer has the energy to run and react like she used to, but she still accomplishes the mission.
She has developed an efficiency of action. There's no rushing and hardly any wasted motion on her part coming to me for a treat.
I'm convinced she has a lot of warnings that I'm cooking eggs. Though her hearing and smell aren't the best anymore, they're still there. It's at least 10-15 minutes from the first hints that I'm making food to the time she decides to come in.
It's well-optimized for the constraints on her being, and it has developed into that over time.
Getting things done also has constraints
We're all bound by time, space, resources, as well as our own energy and attention.
In an environment of constraints on these things, efficiency of action is a tool that can focus what's available on things that matter.
I'll ignore my physics background for a second where everything has well-defined units and call everything a block. Time, physical resources, mental resources, space, everything, adds up to gives us so many blocks per day to get things done.
Let's say I have 100 blocks on a typical day to get things done on my side hustles, given me and my situation.
Writing an article, posting it on my website, reposting it to Medium, and sending it out in my newsletter might take 50 blocks, on average. Recording a video, editing it, and uploading it to YouTube might also take 50 blocks.
Efficiency of action becomes necessary
With improved sleep, more regular exercise, and getting rid of low-value activities, I could increase my capacity to 150 or even 200 blocks a day.
But because I'm getting older, just like Taffy, next year I wouldn't be surprised if I only had 97 blocks a day, simply because of age, nothing else changing.
These kinds of constraints become more constraining with time, and the only way to battle this is by getting things done more efficiently: to do the same thing expending fewer blocks.
Here are three ways to apply efficiency of action to get more done:
1. Practice and do the same thing, but faster
Writing articles goes faster with deliberate practice. You can build up typing speed, subject matter expertise, and the wordcraft of forming thoughts into well-formed sentences.
If I improve my writing process and speed, I might be able to get that 50-block article task done in 30.
2. Build systems for information retrieval
A haphazard system for recording thoughts — think random slips of paper or the backs of envelopes — does little to provide assistance in the middle of creating something.
Writing things in a limited number of places like a couple of notebooks or a limited number of apps like Obsidian or Notion is a good first step.
The next step would be developing an organized personal knowledge management system based on a zettelkasten (“slip box”) paradigm or a second-brain idea with progressive summarization. This not only keeps information in one place, but it aids in locating it promptly when you need it.
3. Craft building blocks of content that can be re-used
One of my blogging colleagues of the past was a machine when it came to creating content. I remember him saying that it was faster for him to just write an article from scratch than it was for him to refashion an old one.
That's unusual, and it's not at all something that I'm able to do. Maybe you aren't either.
It's more effective, in my mind, to work toward creating content that can be used in multiple places, and that can be built upon.
If a piece of content consumes 5 blocks, but it can be used in three different places with minimal additional effort, it's doing the work of 15 blocks. That's leverage.
Look for deliberate ways to increase efficiency of action
Work smarter, not harder!
Thanks for reading!
Hi, I'm John and I encourage entrepreneurship in people, including myself.
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