What does it mean to use energy efficiently? Deliberately, intentionally, thoughtfully?

Activity and action

The capacity for sustained effort when facing genuine challenges often reflects valuable character traits like persistence and commitment. But "hard work" is not inherently virtuous. Hard work is worthwhile when it is necessary.

Doing unnecessary work is activity, not action. I'm not talking about friendly, "fun" activities, I am talking about busy-ness. This type of activity is a placeholder, a distraction; something we use to delude ourselves and pat ourselves on the back. What do we truly accomplish through activity? And if activity is not used for accomplishment, is it at least for our enjoyment?

When we are listening, we can hear when life asks us for hard work – we actually don't need to go looking for it. "Struggle" in nature is really sophisticated efficiency: organisms and systems find the most effective ways to achieve their purposes given real constraints. Nature flows in the path of least resistance in elegant ways, and following this path leads to flow, rather than stagnation.

Water carves the Grand Canyon not through brute force but by persistently finding the path where rock yields most readily. Evolution doesn't "try harder" or "do more," it finds the configurations that work best with available resources and environmental pressures. A wolf hunting doesn't exhaust itself in futile chases, but reads herd dynamics to identify the most vulnerable (or available) target.

It's where there is least resistance that lasting victory, change, and triumph takes place.
True revolutions succeed not by overwhelming opposition but by finding the cultural or intellectual spaces where they can take root and spread organically – by creating, not dominating. Perhaps our cultural valorization of grinding through resistance (working harder rather than working more intelligently or purposefully) is what's truly unnatural.

Don't get me wrong: pushing up against repeated "no"s can be an incredible feat, a heroic journey of the heart. It can also be destructive, ugly and egoically driven. It's worth asking, why do we fight what is? To call ourselves better, stronger, faster than each other? We can create fights for ourselves so that we may be victorious; though in doing so, we tire ourselves, losing our true power in groundless scuffles, battles or wars that drain us of our energy to do what is necessary, what the course demands of us.

When we fight the fight that is necessary, we grow and shine. And if that's true, what if all our work was predicated on necessity? What if instead of staying busy, we did only what mattered to us? Each action could be a profession of gratitude, a recognition of the gifts of the world, a dedication of ourselves to all that lives around and with us.

Wholeness and connection

It takes energy – mindful, careful energy – to do what is necessary, to act with intention, purpose and love. We cannot slop through a never-ending list of to dos with love. We live our little lives, accomplishing our little goals, filling our little schedules, ticking off chores with such fervor, trying desperately to forget just how small we are.

But when we remember the wholeness in which we play our small role, the wholeness in the Everything, and the Nothing... we can see our "grand accomplishments of productivity" for what they are: cries for validation, attempts to make meaning. We forget we are all weavers and threads of an unfathomably enormous tapestry: more beautiful, confusing, lovely and mysterious than we allow ourselves to stop and see.

Wondering at the magic of creation and finding our place within it is much more satisfying than any rush of dopamine from crossing off to-dos. Staying busy isn't the answer; it is staying connected. Working hard isn't an indication of health, virtue, or reasons to be proud, but rather a modality through which we can express ourselves in a context that asks us for our sacrifice. Hard work is beautiful when it is transformative, not when it is relegated to the circular throws of every day performative activity.

Nihilism and meaning

It's like: we stay busy because if we slow down and really look at our lives, we might confront the possibility that none of it matters. We fill our time with dramas and to-dos to avoid thinking about our fears, death, nothingness, or that terrifying question of "what if this is all pointless?" The productivity becomes a kind of existential anesthesia, keeping us from feeling the clutches of a nihilistic black hole's unseen gravity.

However, the antidote to nihilism is certainly not work or productivity. It is to allow yourself to be sucked into all of its terrifyingly terrible implications, and to hold it in balance with love. Like suffering or meaninglessness, love is a part of life on Earth. To hold the whole is to see truth without bias. But we get to choose what we focus on, what we grow within our experience through our attention – which is up to each individual. For me, I choose to see love as irrefutable, the underlying fabric of the tapestry of life, woven into everything. Love is that truth, in a sense: big enough to encompass the whole, including the denial of its existence or power.

Therefore, we must derive our worth, security, and meaning from our inherent connection to love, and how we might practice and share love. Love is the sometimes gentle, sometimes reckless force we can attune to that provides guidance beyond our own mental calculations of what we think we should be doing.

Listening and discernment

How can we align our efforts with the deeper flows of existence, rather than manufacturing arbitrary struggles? Discernment isn't a purely intellectual exercise but involves our whole being: our emotions, body, desires, and intuitive sense of what is truly alive and right. The challenge, of course, is developing the sensitivity to hear and sit with these subtler signals, beneath the noise of conditioning and social expectations.

We have to sense where the fear is, where the love is, etc. And listen to what is calling to us. Instead of asking "How can I do more?" or even "What should I prioritize?" the question becomes "What wants to emerge through me?" or "Where is life trying to flow?" That's a fundamentally different orientation. It's more collaborative with existence, as opposed to trying to impose our will upon it.

Cultivating attunement

This kind of attunement requires listening, receptivity, and attentiveness. It requires a certain stillness, slowness or spaciousness that has to be actively cultivated in a culture of constant activity. It requires developing intimacy with our own aliveness. To act out of love, we must learn to recognize what supports our deepest vitality and the vitality of the whole (which are, paradoxically, the same thing) versus what merely maintains our social identity or inner critic's approval. What does that look like?

• Spending time in natural settings – not necessarily wilderness adventures, but regular contact with living systems that operate by those principles of flow and responsiveness the article describes. Trees, water, even houseplants can be teachers in this kind of listening.
• Noticing the difference between mental chatter and deeper knowing – developing familiarity with how anxiety-driven thoughts feel different in the body, as opposed to genuine insights or callings. The quality of energy behind our motivations often reveals more than the content of our thoughts.
• Paying attention to what gives us energy versus what drains it – not just immediate pleasure versus effort, but what feels expansive and alive versus what feels contractive or deadening over time. Our energy patterns are often more honest than our ideas about what we should want.
• Creating space between impulse and action – even small pauses can help us sense whether something is arising from genuine response or from habit, pressure, or the need to stay busy.
• Practicing with small decisions first – where to walk, what to eat, when to speak up in conversation. Building trust in our capacity to sense and respond before applying it to major life choices.

Those are just some ideas, though. What works for you?

Written August 6, 2021
Expanded and edited August 1, 2025

Author's Note: This essay emerged from personal reflections, with portions developed through dialogue with Claude AI (Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4). The core insights about activity versus action, existential meaning-making, and approximately 60-65% of the writing represent original human work, while nature analogies, systematic explanations, and practical frameworks were explored and refined through AI-assisted conversation. I believe in transparent attribution when AI tools contribute to creative work, both to acknowledge the collaborative process and to recognize that AI systems are built upon the collective knowledge and labor of countless human contributors.