Efficiency

July 10, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

When I posted about how to raise your Metaphor Q, I recommended that doing what you love as often as you can is good practice. If you stay present and aware, metaphor will show up in your favorite activities and peak experiences. My daily peak experience activity is rowing and today I learned a rowing lesson that correlates with a life direction lesson.

One of our boat club’s most skilled, knowledgeable and successful master rowers offered to row in a 2x (2 people, 4 oars) with me so that he could check my technical progress and help me improve. He’s a great coach and teacher so I jumped at the chance. His initial comments had to do with my applying too much force, expending too much effort and slowing the boat down by trying to speed it up. He had me practice a series of technique drills while he explained (from behind me) what I should be noticing and feeling as I eliminated excess motions from my stroke to make it smoother, more efficient, and more perfectly timed.

At one point, when he said “that’s it!”, I told him that I felt like I was pretty slow and not doing much of anything. His response was “that is because you have a false sense of boat speed.” Then I turned around (scullers face backwards) and he showed me the wrong (hard) way, and the right (efficient) way. Watching him and feeling the boat move, it was immediately apparent that trying too hard interfered with boat speed and added check, which, because of slight, repetitive, inefficient movements translates to “going the wrong way!”

Throughout the day I’ve seen the correlation everywhere, for example: wrongway.png

  • drivers speeding up, stopping short and weaving in and out trying to beat the lights and the other drivers
  • clients expressing their frustration with endless, extraneous “stupid” tasks in their jobs that kill their creativity and productivity
  • everyone multi-tasking, rushing and doing more to get ahead or to stay ahead while constantly subjecting themselves to news and information that informs them of seemingly insurmountable costs and hurdles to accomplishing either, and no end in sight

We’re speeding up, trying to do more, urgently competing for safety and survival.. but we’re “checking the boat” and going the wrong way.

A response I often hear is “but how?”, or, “I have no choice!”, or “next week (or month, or year) when I have more or less of ‘x’”. Well, there’s a glut of advice and tips available about how to improve efficiency, but although its mostly common sense, without a shift in awareness and belief, it results in superficial and temporary changes at best, and increased frustration and stress at worst. It needn’t be as hard as adding more goals and lists and resolutions.

Instead, just notice how different experiences feel when you do them with a lighter touch, or natural influence and when you let go of pre-conceived assumptions about what the results should be. Those assumptions, or beliefs, may be based on “a false sense of (insert your metaphorical term)” and create an artificial self-influence that counter-directs you away from your ideal.

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