The Efficiency Trap: What We Lose When We Stop Chopping Our Own Garlic

I got into the habit of using ‘very lazy’ pre-chopped garlic recently. It comes in a cute little jar, suspended in some liquid or other, and it’s convenient as anything — just spoon a bit out and whack it into your pan.

When I ran out I landed with the cheaper option: regular old needs-chopping garlic. Having spent the required time chopping said garlic — four cloves, because one is never enough — chucking it into a pan of diced courgette, herbs, and eggs — I realise what the efficiency had taken from me: fresh, wonderful garlic. The smell, the taste, the glorious magic that it adds to a meal. Whatever you think to pre-chopped garlic, there’s a little of that magic missing.

And whatever you think to endless efficiency, it’s stealing some colour from our lives. We’re no longer taking the long way round just because, we’re not doing things slowly, we’re taking shortcuts and simplifying and skipping the fundamentals. Because there’s always something better to do after we’ve finished this, some imagined future to hurry towards that steals us from the present.

My dad and step-mum, both almost eighty, struggle to use the train as neither of them can work the necessary and very efficient apps on a smart phone. My grandma can no longer call the doctors for an appointment, they insist on her filling out a form online and she doesn’t own any kind of device.

Lampposts and doorhandles and bins in the park, unless they’re decades old, are ugly; it’s no longer efficient to add any kind of beauty. Even modern architecture has fallen into this trap. Compare the brutalist architecture of London’s Southbank Centre and the beauty of St Paul’s Cathedral

Even cars are becoming machines of insanity because of their efficiencies — my mum’s 2025 Mini, which has a giant tablet instead of a dashboard, doesn’t show the indicator lights or full-beam light on the driver’s side, and the dials for the fans are lost inside a touch-screen settings menu.

We’ve got furniture and toys and clothes made in a rush, delivered in a rush, only to be used for a third of the time our grandparents would use them for. 

We’re becoming ultra efficient at the great loss of independence, humanity, beauty, and craftsmanship. At the great loss of that magic. Of the present moment.

Efficiency is great, until we’re putting it on a pedestal it doesn’t belong. 

Surely our ultimate goal with become uber efficient is the time we’ll get back to spend on being present. On kicking off our shoes, leaning back into the grass, and arguing the merits of The Lord of the Rings franchise with someone we love. Throwing a ball on a beach for a beloved dog who’ll later get under our feet as we cook something slow (with fresh garlic). Lounging and daydreaming and pottering. Surely this is the purpose for which we press so earnestly for efficiency? 

But in a twist of wonderful irony, so efficiently we’ve learned to become efficient that we no longer know how to stop. You’d think with the wonderful invention of AI, which takes the most tedious work off our hands, we’d be spending more time doing less. But no — with the spare time we’ve been given we’re working harder than ever.

Efficiency can be helpful, but let’s remember why we’re using it in the first place. Let’s relearn to be idle, to shift gears from fifth back to neutral, to come back to the present moment where nothing all that much can be improved upon. 

And if the efficiency gods have taught you well and you’re afraid of wasting your potential, remember these words from A. A. Milne: "Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something."

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