I don’t know how a CFO of 121 companies even considers playing a Korean MMO, or why is he even wasting his valuable time in the forums really. While I am skeptical of your claim of being such, I will play along.
The most efficient way, in any cooperative game of any genre, is to dedicate some time, maybe 20-40 minutes, and find people to play with. Pugging is the worse way to experience any type of cooperative game and the way you throw away most of your time.
While I might not be a CFO, I am a regional director in an insurance company, and I’ve been playing games since high school (I am 32). From the very beginning, you learn the paragraph I wrote before., and you apply it because time is not money, since you can’t buy more of it.
The difference in time investment in this game is extremely vast, from a pug to a non-pug experience, and it also lets you plan out your days in your schedule. Let me write out an example:
Clown raid took my static group 2 days of 4 hours (done on Saturday and Sunday) to clear all 3 gates. After the initial clear, we raid clown each Wednesday and it takes us 30-60 minutes to clear. We also do clown with 2 other alts, which takes us a bit more, so add 2 more hours per week.
Clown is by far the longest it has taken us and still takes us to clear per character. However, the advantage of joining a consistent group of people is that it drastically reduces any time commitment and, as a person with a job and tight time, it lets me schedule the rest of my stuff. Let me remind you that I do NOT know these people prior. I simply looked and spammed for a bit for static and they invited me.
Playing Lost Ark is extremely grindy when you add chaos dungeons and guardian raids. Perhaps my main gripe with the gameplay. However, Legion raids are quick and relatively easy when you just go one single more step, get out of pugging, and joining a consistent group.