Danny ChaiI’m maniacal about efficiency. Because I’m lazy and want to spend the absolute minimum time on tasks that, quite frankly, I hate doing. But I’m not irresponsible enough that I’ll shirk them altogether. I’ll do what needs to be done. I’m just obsessed with making the time I spend on it an absolute minimum.
For example, pretty much every time I leave the apartment, I try and take something out if my hands aren’t already full. Bathroom trash, kitchen trash, other trash, recycling… something. That way, I avoid having to make a separate trip just to take that jonx out. Efficiency bred by laziness.
With like laundry, Jieun prefers doing one load at a time. Me, I like doing *at least* 2 loads at a time. It just takes less time overall to take it all over at once and fold it all at once than to do them separately. Same philosophy with putting dishes away or whatever: do incrementally little more work to minimize total work.
Whenever I go out to run errands, I always arrange the tasks such that it minimizes the total travel distance and effort, including considerations of things like left turns. Maybe everyone does this. But I do this at home also. If I have to move stuff around the apartment, I think about how I can order things to minimize how much I have to walk. I do a mini-version of the trash thing a lot – if I’m going into another room, I think about whether there’s something I should take with me. It’s constantly on my mind. Such is my devotion to minimizing work time and consequently maximizing screw around time.
Another thing is, I think I have an OCD complex related to reading. It’s a disease. I absolutely must read the newspaper every day. Not necessarily read every article, but at least scan over every page. My magazines, on the other hand, I have to read every single article. This includes Newsweek, Esquire, Christianity Today, and the AAA magazine (which thankfully is a quarterly). It’s exhausting. Sometimes, it’s like a job; I’m not even sure it’s pleasurable, and sometimes when I’m behind and I get another issue my heart kind of drops at the work it will take to catch up. There was a great deal recently on a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, but I had to pass it up; having to keep up with another weekly magazine in my life would have a materially negative effect on my family.
I’ve tried to figure out why it is I’m like this, why I have to read everything. And there are actually other places in my life where I’m the same way. There’s just something about me that’s a perfectionist or a completist. I’ve never highlighted my textbooks – it offended me to not consider them in their entirety. I dropped out of my philosophy class after missing a lecture because I couldn’t bear to go to a subsequent lecture without catching up, and I never found the time to catch up. I have a host of lecture notes and technical books I’ve never gotten through because I can’t just browse it, but don’t have the time to go through it in its entirety. There’s just something about me that is unable to skim. Frequently, it’s to my detriment.
I’m making a concerted effort to change that for the sake of my sanity. Like, deliberately choosing to not read articles that really aren’t that relevant to me. The problem is, I find nearly anything interesting, if it’s well written, and yes, I’d probably find that article on the mating habits of Yorkshire Terriers interesting, even though I don’t care about them now and don’t plan to care about it ever. I have to let it go. But it’s a sign of my obsessiveness that it’s so hard. Even now, I feel a pull to finish up those three articles I didn’t read in the latest Newsweek. Must… let… go.
The sad thing is, I lied about there being three articles to seem less compulsive. I only skipped one.