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[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

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Rushing is a poor and disgraceful excuse for efficiency and gracefulness.

Replace anxiety, stress, exhaustion, and anxious multitasking with calm productive focus, graceful competence, and inspired free-spirited happy non-exhaustion.

Rushing and/or multitasking both cause anxiety and unproductiveness.

I didn't forget to color-code the word unproductiveness as red in the preceding paragraph. That's because I don't recommend productivity, and I don't recommend against being unproductive. To me, productivity-seeking is a neutral thing, like drinking alcohol, weightlifting, or having sex. On those things, I say, to each their own.

But the irony is that it is in the name of productivity that people engage in counter-productive rushing and counter-productive multitasking. They ironically think the misery, exhaustion, stress and anxiety is the horrible price they pay to be more productive, and so they pay it, but the irony is that the opposite is the case: it's lose-lose. Not only do they pay that horrible price, but they get the exact opposite of what they think they are paying for. It wouldn't even be worth that horrible price if productivity was actually obtained for that horrible price, but the brutally ironic reality is that in their desperate seeking they get precisely the opposite of what they desperately seek precisely by desperately seeking it. In life, a good rule of thumb is this: What you chase therefore runs away, and the more more you chase it, the faster it runs away. You often get much further by slow steady consistent walking than wild fast desperate running. And the most graceful among us know how to make it come to you. Seduce more than you get seduced.

Rushing is correlated with incompetence, low quality work, inefficiency, and poor results. A person typically only rushes as a sloppy ineffective way to compensate for their lack of efficiency and lack of competence. And, ironically, the rushing usually makes their work that much slower, more inefficient, and lower quality. They think of rushing as the antidote for their inefficiency/incompetence/slowness but rather rushing and inefficiency go hand-in-hand with each other.

In contrast, efficiency is correlated with competence, gracefulness, and non-rushing.

Consider this example to illustrate: Imagine two newbie taxi cab drivers who are both struggling to make enough because they are each new to taxi-driving and new to the city. Imagine one of the drivers attempts to serve more customers by rushing. Not only will he likely provide a lower quality service by having bumpy rushed rides with frequent wrong turns and accidents, but his rushing will likely cause him to be even more inefficient, due to the wrong turns and time-wasting accidents. In contrast, imagine the other of the two drivers decides to improve his service and make more money by memorizing the roads and city map, and by taking driving classes and practicing more. Those same factors that make him more efficient also make his service higher quality regardless of speed: Riding with him is not only faster, but is less bumpy and involves less wrong turns and accidents.

Foolishness is more common than it's opposite, and it's both very common and very foolish to think rushing is a means to efficiency and to think that quality and speed are negatively correlated.

Fools foolishly and wrongly believe that the price of faster work or faster output is lower quality work or lower quality output and that the price of higher quality service/output/work is slower more inefficient service/output/work. But the exact opposite is actually true: Quality is correlated with efficiency. Your choice is NOT between (1) slow but high quality versus (2) fast but low quality. No. Rather, your choice is between (1) slow, anxiously rushed, and low quality versus (2) efficient, fast, and high quality.

Since most people foolishly and wrongly believe the opposite, I recommend you avoid that very common foolishness by telling yourself this mantra repeatedly every day: Efficiency is correlated with quality.

Repeat that to yourself out loud every day multiple times. Print it out in large print and tape it on your wall where you will see if every day. Most people people the opposite despite it being utterly wrong and self-destructive. So save yourself from that common destructive foolishness by constantly reminding yourself of the truth: Efficiency is correlated with quality.

Another way to word the same mantra, which you can use an an alternative mantra or an additional mantra, whichever you prefer, is this: Rushing is inefficient.

The same factors that make you faster also make you better, and the same factors that make you slower make you worse, meaning make your end product or service much lower quality.

I'm not a fan of Amazon, but I'll give credit where credit is due: A company that delivers packages slower than Amazon also almost certainly delivers with more damage on average, to the wrong house more often, or with the wrong product box more often. Going faster doesn't come at the expense of those other aspects of quality service; it is correlated with them. The same factors that give you speed and efficiency give you all the other aspects of high quality service/output/work. Likewise, the same factors that result in low quality work are what result in slower more inefficiency work. Rushing is one of those factors: Rushing leads to inefficiency, mistakes, and very slow low quality work.

Which bartender do you think is more likely to give you the correct drink that you actually ordered, made well according to the actual correct recipe (e.g. the right ratio of liqueur to mixer): The calm graceful efficient bartender who makes it much faster than the other bartender, or the one who doesn't even start making it until 10 minutes after you ordered it, not to mention the time it took for him even take your order? The second one is more likely to rush (in a foolish attempt to compensate for the inefficiency and incompetence), and yet rushing makes one more like the second one. Rushing is both a symptom and a cause of the inefficiency, slowness, and low quality product.

To give anther example, imagine you order two pizzas at the same exact time but each from a different restaurant. For the sake of argument, let's imagine the restaurants are equidistant from you (i.e. they are both the same distance from your house). Imagine one pizza arrives in 20 minutes and the other takes 2 hours to arrive. Which pizza do you think is more likely to be cold? Which one do you think is more likely to taste bad? Let's assume one and only one of the two pizzas was accidentally left out, got cold, and then was reheated the microwave before being delivered to you. Which one of the two do you think that was? Imagine one of the two pizzas was dropped on the ground before being delivered to you, and then it was picked up with someone with gloves picking off and brushing off the dirt before bringing it to you. Which one of the two do you think that was? And here is the kicker: Who do you think is more likely to have been rushing: The one who dropped your pizza, who forgot your pizza and let it get cold, and who used a microwave to heat your pizza? Or the person who delivered you a high-quality great-tasting pizza quickly and efficiently? Inefficiency leads to rushing, and rushing leads to inefficiency. And both are strongly correlated with bad quality service, bad quality products, and bad quality output. All of the other aspects of what makes a product or service better and higher quality besides speed also happen to make its delivery faster and more efficient. Likewise, all of the other aspects besides slowness that make a product or service low quality and bad also happen to make its delivery tend to be much slower and more inefficient.

Do less better.

Replace anxious rushing with calm graceful efficiency. And replace multitasking with monotasking.


For more on the subject of multitasking vs monotasking, I strongly recommend you read the book, The Smartest Person in the Room by Christian Espinosa


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success.

[Surabhi Rani]

Nice thoughts and opinions expressed on 'productivity' in human life. They hail the great values in our lives - 'what is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.' We need to replace 'anxious rushing' with 'calm graceful efficiency' and replace multitasking with monotasking.

[Sushan]

Love how you emphasize the pitfalls of multitasking and rushing—'What you chase therefore runs away.' It's a powerful reminder that true efficiency comes from calm, focused actions, not frantic juggling.

[Julius Peters]

This is extremely correct. I completely agree that chasing productivity through frantic effort often backfires, leading to stress and inefficiency. True efficiency comes from calm, focused, and deliberate actions, not from hurried multitasking. Quality over quantity is key: doing less, but with greater care and mindfulness, can lead to more meaningful and sustainable achievements.

[Julius Peters]

This is extremely correct. I completely agree that chasing productivity through frantic effort often backfires, leading to stress and inefficiency. True efficiency comes from calm, focused, and deliberate actions, not from hurried multitasking. Quality over quantity is key: doing less, but with greater care and mindfulness, can lead to more meaningful and sustainable achievements.

[Adaboo]

For the past few months I learned that some people are good at multitasking, if it is true then it is worth trying, but if not true, it doesn't mean it applies to everybody. Any results you get in life don't apply to other people. I'm doing a music and learning software development course. I'm doing both and I'm fine. It is a scheduled process, you just practice self-discipline. And I'm a reviewer in onlinebookclub. So you see how I go. Just that your progress will be slow, and you need to be a patient person. But it is difficult though. That's in my opinion, what about you?

[rajesh kumar jain]

Rushing is a poor and disgraceful excuse for efficiency and gracefulness. Sure, it might feel like speeding through tasks saves time, but more often than not, it leads to mistakes, stress, and lower quality work. True efficiency means planning carefully, setting priorities, and tackling tasks methodically. Gracefulness comes from staying composed and paying attention to detail, even when you're under pressure. On the other hand, rushing usually results in chaos, undermining both productivity and the end result.

[Seetha E]

Productivity will only suffer if quantitative objectives are rushed to be met at the expense of efficiency. I completely agree. Initially slow, but steady, will increase efficiency and thus, ensure quality output.