The Efficiency of Obsession: Why Half-Interest Wastes More Energy Than Passion

“To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.” — Matt Haig, The Humans

We live in an age of mild enthusiasm. We scroll, skim, and like. We bookmark things. We “find them interesting.” But rarely do we love them. Everything is interesting enough to notice but rarely deep enough to move us. Matt Haig calls this indifference a disease, and he’s right. When everything is lukewarm, nothing burns bright.

Indifference feels safe. It protects us from disappointment, from appearing naive, from giving too much. But here’s the paradox: being half-interested drains more energy than being obsessed. It creates cognitive drag. Passion, though intense, is actually efficient.

The more emotionally invested you are, the more cognitively efficient you become.

Half-Interest: The Hidden Energy Leak

“When you're only halfway interested in something, you'll lose to someone obsessed. It won't even be close.” – Shane Parrish

It’s not just poetic; it’s practical. Half-interest is friction. It’s the mental equivalent of trying to drive with one foot on the brake. You’re spending energy to stay involved but not enough to enter flow.

Think about it. When you’re fully absorbed in something (coding, writing, playing music, solving a problem), hours disappear. You don’t try to focus; focus happens. Your brain’s attentional systems synchronize. Your prefrontal cortex quiets. You move smoothly between curiosity, effort, and reward.

When you’re only partly engaged, the opposite occurs. You’re constantly checking the clock, battling distraction, switching tasks. You overthink small choices because you haven’t decided to care fully. The result: you burn through mental fuel without real progress.

Indifference looks neutral, but it’s exhausting.

The Science of Passion as Efficiency

Passion has an undeserved reputation as impulsive or emotional. In reality, it’s a neurological efficiency mechanism; a system designed to minimize resistance between what you value and what you do.

1. Cognitive efficiency: Passion sharpens pattern recognition

When you care about something, your brain flags it as important. Dopamine levels rise not only when you achieve something but also when you anticipate learning more. This chemical motivation deepens memory consolidation, meaning you retain and connect information faster.

The curious student isn’t “working harder” than the indifferent one; their brain simply tags the data as meaningful. Over time, those small advantages compound, just like interest in a savings account.

2. Behavioral efficiency: Repetition becomes effortless

Motivation researchers often distinguish between effortful persistence and intrinsic persistence. When driven by curiosity or love, repetition doesn’t feel like drudgery. You don’t need as much willpower because each small action rewards you with feedback and micro-pleasure.

That’s why the passionate athlete practices longer, the fascinated scientist tests one more variable, and the devoted craftsperson keeps refining a detail nobody else will notice. Passion removes the need for constant self-control; it turns practice into flow.

• Effortful persistence is when you keep going because you have to, not because you want to. It takes discipline and self-control. You push yourself through resistance, often relying on willpower or obligation rather than genuine interest.

• Intrinsic persistence is when you keep going because you want to, not because you have to. It feels natural and energizing. You stay engaged because the activity itself is meaningful, enjoyable, or personally rewarding.

3. Emotional efficiency: Love as a resilience buffer

Emotions organize attention. When you’re emotionally invested, setbacks feel tolerable because they belong to a story you care about, building up your resilience. The energy you might waste on questioning “Why am I even doing this?” disappears. Passion aligns emotion, attention, and effort – the triad of psychological efficiency.

That’s also why burnout often doesn’t come from caring too much, but from caring deeply about the wrong things or being prevented from acting on what you value. Passion is sustainable when it matches purpose.

The Myth of Balance: Passion and Productivity

We’ve been taught that balance equals health, moderation equals wisdom. In practice, many people confuse balance with disengagement. They flatten their emotional range to avoid extremes, but a flatline isn’t peace; it’s absence of pulse.

The world doesn’t need more balanced people. It needs people who can care intensely without losing themselves. People who can rest because they’ve earned rest, not because they’re afraid of caring too much.

In creative work, leadership, and even relationships, those who commit completely move faster precisely because they’ve reduced internal debate. Decision-making is quicker. Focus lasts longer. The energy that would have gone to hesitation is re-routed to execution.

Being obsessed, in the healthy sense, doesn’t mean reckless hustle. It means coherence between what you value and how you spend your time. That alignment is what most people actually mean when they talk about balance.

Efficiency as Depth

Real efficiency isn’t doing more things; it’s removing friction between thought and action. Passion dissolves that gap. When you love something, the feedback loop between attention and reward tightens. Your perception of time changes; tasks that looked hard become absorbing.

Research on flow states by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi showed that high performers achieve this state not through balance but through immersion – total engagement where challenge and skill meet. Obsession, in this light, is not excess but precision. It’s the mind tuned exactly to its task.

And yet, many of us try to optimize our schedules without optimizing our hearts. We install productivity apps, reorganize calendars, track habits… but never ask, Do I actually care about this? That single question could eliminate more wasted effort than any time-management system.

The Courage to Care

Passion requires vulnerability. It exposes you to failure, judgment, even heartbreak. But efficiency isn’t comfort; it’s clarity. When you know what deserves your energy, you stop negotiating with yourself.

Haig’s idea that civilization advances alongside indifference might be the greatest warning of our era. We’re efficient at the mechanical level (faster devices, shorter meetings, cleaner dashboards), yet emotionally sluggish. We produce more and feel less.

The cure isn’t detachment; it’s devotion. Not working harder, but working wholeheartedly.

In a distracted world, depth itself becomes a competitive advantage.

Reflection

Imagine two people running the same race. One runs out of duty, checking her watch every few minutes. The other runs because she loves the rhythm, the wind, the burn in her legs. Physically, they’re performing the same act. Neurologically, they’re worlds apart. One is fighting resistance; the other has dissolved it.

That’s what passion does. It removes the drag of ambivalence. It converts energy into motion with minimal loss. And that (not multitasking, not optimization) is the real science of efficiency.

So the next time you feel only “somewhat interested,” ask whether it’s worth doing at all. Because halfway engagement doesn’t just waste time; it corrodes vitality.

Love It or Leave It

Matt Haig’s words linger: “To like something is to insult it.” Civilization may keep advancing, but attention is what defines progress at the individual level. Every time we choose indifference, we subtract clarity. Every time we choose love – genuine, consuming, inconvenient love –, we align mind and energy in the same direction.

To be efficient is to be wholehearted. Don’t dabble. Love it or leave it.