This week I wanted to examine what our obsession with efficiency really means and especially to creatives. Thank you for taking the time to read my Substack and if you would like access to hundreds of articles, reviews, interviews, short stories, podcasts, playlists and videos then please consider a paid or free subscription. Many Thanks.

As part of my job I regularly take short flights from my local airport to the UK. If I’m lucky there will be an Aer Lingus flight with a clean plane, comfy seats and flight assistants that care about basic things like passengers, service and quality of life. However, most of the time I am flown by the extreme low cost machine that is Ryan Air.

For those of you unfamiliar with Europe’s biggest, cheapest and most divisive airline, RyanAir is the cheapest of the cheap and continually looking for ways to shave off or charge for any last drop of experience left in their business model. For example, my company pays for me to have ‘Priority Boarding’. This means that I get to wait on the tarmac for ten minutes while the aircraft arrives and then get to see the previous passengers rush off (everyone involved with RyanAir rushes), before running hard to the steps to board. But I board first which means sitting in a tiny seat with no air conditioning for fifteen minutes while the non-priority plebeians make their noisy way onboard. It also gives me a wonderful opportunity to observe people looking at their screenshotted tickets on their phones and pretending that they cannot read the difference between A (a window seat), and B (not a window seat).

Essentially all customer experience is up for sacrifice on the altar of efficiency which is because efficiency equals profit or, in the company’s outside voice, ‘efficiency equals low fares’ which is what everyone wants - right? My favourite efficiency is that all the onboard toilets are closed 15 minutes before landing - which seems to be so that the flight crew can wipe them down before the next group of bursting bladder passengers stumble onboard.

Running an airline this way means the customer’s only experience is transactional; they feel more or less happy depending on how. much they have spent. The company’s promo focuses solely on price and never tells you how flying RyanAir will make you feel. There are no ‘Friendly Skies’ or beautifully luxury first class cabins, no smiling staff or seamless connections. You pay, you get on, you sit down (“in your assigned seat, as quickly as possible”), and you get off.

It is not just low cost airlines that run efficiency cults. Everywhere we look there are hacks, short cuts and somebody’s Top Ten Tips to make everything easier from healthy living to effective cross cultural communication!

There are podcasts, articles and blogs dedicated to making everything more efficient.

But why do we want everything to be quicker, more efficient or instant. There is an old joke about the young wanting to get older quickly and the old wanting to remain young for longer. Is it because the more time we spend alive, the less time we realise we have and the more we recognise that the remaining days, weeks and months need to be savoured and enjoyed?

If we use hacks and short cuts for everything then what are we living for? To do more things quicker? We are focused almost entirely on the result, the destination rather than the journey and the final exam rather than what we learnt from the course work. In fact the whole objective of education today is to pass exams rather than to actually learn something.

The beauty of life is in the living. Living to the full, smelling the coffee, the roses and the strange mix of damp, talcum powder and ammonia that babies release. If your coffee is in a plastic cup covered with a lid then half of your sensory experience is removed because you cannot smell its rich aroma. So you got your latte quicker and you can carry it down the street, sipping a little of it at every other step or keep it next to you in your car’s cup holder so that it becomes an accessory. Something not entirely necessary that you experience while experiencing a myriad other tasks and sensations: driving, talking, walking, watching fail videos. What you are not doing is enjoying the sensation of drinking coffee.

For creatives this worship of efficiency runs counter to our souls on two levels; I need the time to experience life so that I can assemble stories, pictures, songs, plays or sculptures about it because every creative endeavour is essentially about life. Similarly, I need an audience to take time to experience my creation. It is not enough to listen to the first fifteen seconds of my song and then shuffle, or tick off my painting in the gallery guidebook (or take an Insta selfie with my work behind you), or read a synopsis of my book, or just watch the trailer to my film. I need you to take time and experience what has been created.

And if this sounds like some new age vibes then think about this from a piece in Forbes entitled “Efficiency Kills Creativity.”

“the creative process must include time for reflection and quiet—moments of rumination and time for ideas to be on our brains’ back-burners.”

The article is by Dr. Tracy Brower who is an expert on happiness and the future of work. She goes on to say that if we want to live better and be more creative we need to reduce the pressure to be efficient all the time and try these actions:

• Take Time to Reflect

• Connect with people unlike yourself.

• Seek unexpected experiences.

• Express creativity outside of work

• Find places that stimulate you.

• Get some sleep.

None of these actions require us to find hacks, tips or shortcuts.

My father in law is an 82 year old Argentinian man. He was at our house in Ireland last week for the first time. The house is in a rural setting with streams running down both sides of the garden and views out to Mount Gabriel that protects us from the worst of the North Atlantic’s weather. My father in law sat himself down on a white bench at the front of the house, spreading his arms along its back and leaning back to allow the light to fall across his face. He sat there for an hour watching the clouds, moving his gaze around the garden to absorb every detail, to hear every bird call or catch the sound of cows at the top of the hill calling as they changed fields. His hand never went to his pocket to pull out his phone, he received no updates on the world for an hour save what he saw and experienced around him. He enjoyed our garden - shouldn’t we all be trying to do the same?

Thank you for taking the time to read my Substack and if you would like access to hundreds of articles, reviews, interviews, short stories, podcasts, playlists and videos then please consider a paid or free subscription. Many Thanks.