The Third Eye: Efficiency lays pathway for success in professional, private life

DOING things efficiently is not to be treated as a burden of ‘compliance’—if effortlessly built into one’s day-to-day business, efficiency would improve the quality of life and open up a new source of self-satisfaction or a kind of happiness that can only be felt from within, not seen by the world outside.

- 

Being efficient is not a ‘compulsion’. However, one should be aware that it could be the ‘perceived ground’ for one’s performance evaluation by ‘outsiders’ who were used to applying certain prescribed parameters for that purpose. Efficiency is also not something that requires the sacrifice of one’s leisure time.

It is more a matter of developing an attitude and a practice for one’s moral or even spiritual well-being. Any ‘material’ benefit that it brought in as its natural consequence, was to be looked at as a bonus.

Does ‘efficiency’ have a definition and can it be incorporated into a higher purpose of life and made a means of self-improvement? In Hindu philosophyso precisely defined by Gita- ‘karma’ or duty performed with ‘devotion’, is termed the highest expression of life's spiritual objective particularly if carried out without being weighed down by the thought of the possible material outcome of the same.

Any ‘duty’ is fulfilled best when it is performed on a note of efficiency for it is only then that it produces an optimal advantage for the beneficiary. Duty is an act of ‘giving’ not ‘taking’ that requires a spend of your energy and ‘resource’ and the return on it lay in the realm of morality and ‘good deeds’ measured by a deeper sense of pleasure touching the heart and soul.

On a mundane note, ‘efficiency’ can be defined as a measure of output per unit of resource usedmoney, material and manpower with ‘time’ having been added as the new resourcein a situation of global competitiveness. In fact, in today’s world, efficiency is judged by how much an employee produces in a given time and that is the reason why ina developed economy a person is paid ‘per hour’ of work.