There are a lot of insights here that I've also experienced due to meditation (though over a longer period), but this one struck me as particularly important:

However, becoming so accepting of both my faults and others' during meditation led me to think that perhaps the disgust I feel for myself and others is a needless emotion, and that simply acknowledging areas of improvement without associating them with negative affect is a much better way to make myself a more awesome person and understand the plights of others. [...] Both are affect-laden thoughts where simple awareness will do better.

Besides simple awareness being what I think to be a more enjoyable way of functioning, I find that it does feel more efficient. Instead of using mental resources to attend to the affect I'm able to apply them to my current task.