We've Been Thinking About Efficiency Wrong

Efficiency Isn't Speed—It's Fuel

Here's something I learned early in my entrepreneurial journey: when we talk about efficiency at work, we're using the wrong mental model.

Most people think efficiency means speed. Getting 10 tasks done in half the time. Shipping features faster than your peers. But that's not efficiency. That's just speed.

Real efficiency is about fuel consumption. Think about cars. When you say a car is efficient, you don't mean it reaches the destination faster. You mean it uses less gas to get there. Two cars might arrive at the same time, but one has half a tank left while the other is running on fumes.

The Real Cost of Work

Your brain has a tank too. Every day, you have a certain amount of mental capacity: fuel for problem-solving, creative thinking, decision-making. Your job consumes some of that fuel. The question isn't how fast you empty the tank. It's how much you have left when you're done.

This matters especially if you're trying to build something on the side. Because whatever fuel remains after your day job? That's all you have for your side hustle.

You might finish your work in half the time compared to a colleague. You might be productive, respected, hitting all your deadlines. But if you're burning through 90% of your mental capacity to do it, you're left with almost nothing for what you actually want to build.

Why I Had to Quit

I worked as a software engineer at a big tech firm. Good role, autonomy, solid pay. But knowledge work is expensive. Real problem-solving work drains you. Each architectural decision, each code review, each bug investigation pulled from the same reservoir.

By the end of the day, I was done. Tired. I'd sit down to work on my own project and find I had nothing left for the kind of deep thinking that building something from scratch requires.

I tried coasting at work. I couldn't do it. My boss trusted me, gave me freedom. Shipping half-baked work felt like a betrayal of that trust. I tried working early mornings before my job. But my brain was already spinning up for the work problems ahead.

The math didn't work. So I quit.

If You're Not Ready to Quit

Not everyone can or should quit. But if you're trying to build something while employed, you need to think seriously about fuel efficiency.

Can you get your current work done while using less mental capacity? Not faster. That might actually burn more fuel. But with less cognitive load. Fewer decisions. Less context-switching. More routine, less novel problem-solving.

If that's not possible in your current role, maybe the answer isn't a different approach to the same job. Maybe it's different work entirely. Part-time lecturing. Contract work with clear scope. Freelancing, though that has its own fuel costs in finding clients.

The point isn't to find "easy" work. It's to find work that doesn't drain the same reservoir you need for building. Work that's orthogonal to your side hustle, not competing with it for the same mental resources.

The Bottom Line

Maximize efficiency in your work so you can spend your fuel on what actually matters. That might mean setting harder boundaries. It might mean changing the type of work you do. Or it might mean, like me, accepting that you need all your fuel for what you're building.