Add a project option to always lock Log Events. We want this default but it is a huge inconvenience to have to LockEvents at the top of every single Keyword Test.
Actually, if you go to Tools -> Current Project Properties -> Playback there's an option there for Store last ____ events. This, effectively, does the same as Log.LockEvents in reducing the logging of events to only storing the last NNN events before every error or warning. We have that set to 20 which is probably higher than necessary for most situations.
Now, unlike the Log.LockEvents method, there's no way of actually turning off event logging in this way (setting to 0 means log all) but, if you're OK with only seeing events on errors and warnings, this should be sufficient.