Don’t sweat that deadline; time-wasting can be time well spent | Emma Wilkins

As a freelancer, I often have days when I just work for my employer. A story is assigned to me, I write professionally, impersonally, efficiently – and then I have days when I write for myself; I choose what I want to say and how, and who to send it to for publication.

One is productive. It consistently results in published work and payment. The other is hit and miss. Rejection and self-doubt abound. On those days, it’s tempting to procrastinate – take walks, do chores, text friends, read books … Even when I write a story that I’m happy with, I can’t always give it an ideal home. But sometimes – just often enough to make this crazy caper feel worthwhile – I can.

What is creative freelance writing like? Easy. Hard. Fun. Painful. Inefficient.

A story I’ve been drafting on my “inefficient” days examines how it’s often cheaper to replace things than to repair them. It’s made us quick to deem possessions worthless, to discard stuff.

To some, preserving what is damaged no longer makes much sense. But what is lost in sense is gained in meaning; in this culture and in these times, mending and treasuring is a rare redemptive act.

Meanwhile, on “efficient” days, when covering employment news, I’ve seen that inefficiency can, somewhat surprisingly, give more than it takes.

Employees, it seems, are often more productive when their managers show care, when they’re willing to “waste” time chatting, listening and offering support. Some workplaces report that giving staff a day off each week but still paying them the same improves the bottom line.

These “inefficiencies” might be ineffective on any given day or in any given moment, but they can generate great value over time – better health, closer personal relationships or more discretionary effort.

Especially in creative fields, some people find the time they “wasted” in retrospect fuelled their work in surprising ways.

For me, taking time out for a walk or to visit a friend doesn’t necessarily make me less productive. Where do ideas and solutions come from if not from daily life? They are just as likely to emerge when I’m hanging out the washing or walking through the bush, as when I’m staring at a screen.

The more creative the piece I’m writing, the more it matters to me personally, and the more procrastinating and rewriting I seem to do. Sometimes, I spend 10 minutes crafting one sentence, or half an hour on a paragraph I later delete. It’s a wildly inefficient process.

But it’s work I love. It’s hard because I do care. That’s why it’s inefficient, and why it’s frustrating when I feel I’ve wasted time. But making one sentence sing can make it all worthwhile.

Not all inefficiency is pointless. Sometimes, it means a deadline is missed but it can also play a role that proves indispensable to the end result.

Goals and targets, timing and output all matter but if we make them all-important we will pay a price; personal relationships, our work and even we can suffer.

Ruthless efficiency can cost us insight, innovation, inspiration and joy. An artist’s work might lack beauty, meaning or soul; the patient treated as a problem to be solved might feel sicker.

In sacrificing time, giving attention – to squeeze a hand in solidarity; to find out how a person really is; to soak up beauty, truth – we might compromise efficiency.

It’s worth asking how time taken to bestow love or to feel wonder can be anything but time well spent?

There are different types of inefficiencies. We’d do well to do away with listless screen scrolling or to streamline paperwork. But we cannot do away with inefficiency itself, and shouldn’t try. Sometimes, it is painful, pointless and profitless, but sometimes it’s the best and only way.