
Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better - joubert
https://psyche.co/ideas/why-efficiency-is-dangerous-and-slowing-down-makes-life-better
======
bschne
I've found "efficiency as the opposite of stability" a very powerful concept
to think about - even though it's fairly simple, it seems to be almost a
fundamental law.

Whether it's about the economy at large, your own household, a supply chain,
what have you - as soon as you optimize for efficiency by removing friction,
you take all the slack/damping out of the system and become instantly more
liable to catastrophic failure if some of your basic conditions change.
Efficiency gives you a speed bonus, at the cost of increased risk / less
resilience to unforeseen events.

Stewart Brand's concept of "Pace Layering" comes to mind for how to deal with
this at a systemic level -
[https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2](https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2)

~~~
civilized
> efficiency as the opposite of stability

In statistics, there is a slight variant of this thesis that is true in a
precise formal sense: the _tradeoff_ between efficiency and "robustness"
(stability in a non-ideal situation).

For example, if you have a population sample, the most efficient way to
estimate the population mean from your sample is the sample mean. But if some
of the data are corrupted, you're better off with a robust estimator - in this
case, a trimmed mean, where the extreme N% of high and low values are
discarded.

The trimmed mean is less efficient in the sense that, if none of the data are
corrupted, it discards information and is less accurate than the full mean.
But it's more robust in the sense that it remains accurate even when a small-
to-moderate % of the data are corrupted.

~~~
clairity
i stumbled on "stability' too, because it's a static quality.

rather than robustness, i prefer to use the term resilience, a dynamic
quality, since efficiency is also a dynamic quality. you can trade efficiency
for resilience and vice versa (as the parent poster switched to later).

edit:

i should add that i don't entirely agree with the thesis of the article, which
exhorts us to slow down, thereby trading efficiency away for resilience. there
are a number of ways to add resilience (and trade away efficiency), and in
some cases, slowing down might be the best, but it's certainly not the only,
or best, option in most cases.

for housing, an example used in the article, we could add more housing to
create resilience, which requires _reducing_ friction, like increasing the
throughput of permitting/inspections while generally reducing
zoning/regulations.

~~~
throwaway815190
I'm completely ignorant on this topic, so I apologize for asking what must be
an extremely stupid question to you, but: what makes stability a static
quality whereas resilience is a dynamic quality? Are these statistical
definitions that I can look up somewhere?

~~~
vulpesx2
Not OP, but my take is that stability is usually defined as a base-state that
will continue onto perpetuity unless some outside force disrupts it.
Resiliency is more closely defined as the ability to recover from disruptions
back to the base-state quickly.

Since the context here is that efficiency can remove layers of redundancy
therefore allowing disruptions to wreck more havoc - I believe that's what OP
was getting at.

------
Taek
This comment thread is making me realize we don't have a good word to
distinguish between efficiency as in "we only have 7 hospital beds because
that's all we need on 99% of each day" and efficiency as in "we replaced steps
X,Y,Z with just step X', because we found that X' could accomplish everything
that XYZ could accomplish but it's faster, more accurate, and cheaper".

One makes a tradeoff by reducing overheads and buffers, and the other doesn't
have any tradeoffs, it's just a better way of doing things based on novel
techniques.

~~~
milesskorpen
I don’t know if those two things are as different as you suggest. Multiple
steps add redundancy, if you fail one step you can get much of the value from
other steps. More steps are frequently added in response to edge cases.

Could be a Chesterton’s Fence scenario

Instead of bemoaning efficiency, it’d be interesting to reward/value
redundancy and antifragility, at least at the system level.

I think this could mean trust busting, regulation, and general cultural
shifts.

~~~
Jtsummers
Multiple steps don't always add redundancy, sometimes they're just noise or
artifacts. I had a colleague who, when opening a file, would first click on
the Windows desktop, then "My Computer", then navigate to the directory, open
the file, and close the Explorer window.

There was zero redundancy versus leaving the directory open so they could open
the next file (or using the application's "Open File" dialog).

That is a perfect example of wasteful motion (in their case due to a poor
mental model of how computers worked, as I learned through later discussions)
that could be simplified significantly without loss of quality or redundancy
in the system.

Contrast this with: The surgical office called me this morning and stated,
"The surgery is for a ganglion cyst on your left wrist." Which I confirmed.
When I go in on Tuesday for the surgery this will be repeated, and a mark will
be made on the area to be cut open (though in this case it'd be _really_ hard
to screw up and open the right wrist, as there is no, quite visible, cyst
there). That is useful redundancy of the sort you describe. Removing any step
(the initial visit a week ago, the call today, the check when I arrive, the
mark on the wrist) and you increase the risk of error.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Lots of good examples in sports, where wasted movements lead to failure,
particularly at the higher levels

~~~
Jtsummers
Yep. Not even just sports games, but athletics and movement in general.
Learning to avoid certain movements when running, swimming, or rowing is very
important especially if the goal shifts from complete a short distance as fast
as possible to complete a long distance in a reasonable time (and often the
more efficient form for long distance translates into faster short distance
results as well).

------
austinl
One of my favorite quotes on this topic comes from Aurelius' description of
his adopted father in _Meditations_.

 _[Y]ou would never say of him that he "broke out a sweat": but everything was
allotted its own time and thought, as by a man of leisure - his way was
unhurried, organized, vigorous, consistent in all_.

I feel like I spend a lot of time rushing from one thing to the next,
constantly questioning whether I'm spending time wisely. And then I end up
accomplishing less because I lack focus in one area. I've instead been trying
to relax, slow down, and take tasks one at a time until completion. I'd also
recommend Cal Newport's book, _Deep Work_ , on this.

~~~
vishnugupta
> but everything was allotted its own time and thought, as by a man of leisure

As an extreme example; watching Schumacher at his peak perform during a
qualifying lap or during race, in treacherous rainy conditions, while everyone
was absolutely struggling, and him out front, half a lap ahead of everyone was
like watching poetry in motion. You could tell he was very relaxed just by the
way his hands operated the steering wheel, hitting the apex every time in a
single motion, no twitching or tossing around the car.

It seemed he just had more time, as in the time had just slowed down for him
compared to everyone else.

Edit: Typo; damn you Mac OS auto-correct!

~~~
thrav
Time dilation is a real thing. You’re likely describing his experience
accurately.

We see it in obviously exaggerated forms in film, like the Matrix, but that’s
based on real shit. The best baseball hitters describe seeing the pitch the
same way.

------
kazinator
Same-day delivery isn't efficiency; it's made possible by inefficiency, like
using more delivery people and vehicles who cover inefficient routes, and
using more warehouses closer to delivery areas.

Actually we can't discuss efficiency without making it clear what parameter we
are optimizing, at the cost of what (if any) other parameters.

However, usually, if we reduce the time something takes not by cleverly
eliminating, rearranging or otherwise streamlining the steps, but rather by
some brute force method that requires more resources (more people, more
equpiment, more energy), it is hard to frame that as efficiency.

~~~
iak8god
Right. Same-day delivery is _fast_ , not usually efficient.

Neither is multitasking using three different devices at the same time
efficient. Again in this example the author seems to be confusing rush with
efficiency. I didn't make it past those first few incoherent lines, so I don't
know whether this confusion persists into the rest of the article.

------
b0rsuk
Transcript of a Calvin&Hobbes strip:

Calvin's Dad, sitting at his desk: "It used to be that if a client wanted
something done in a week, it was considered a rush job and he'd be lucky to
get it."

CD: "Now, with modems, faxes, and car phones, everyone wants everything
instantly! Improved technology just increases expectations."

CD: "These machines don't make life easier - they make life more harassed."

Calvin, in the background: "Six minutes to microwave this?? Who's got that
kind of time?!"

CD: "If we wanted more leisure, we'd invent machines that do things _less_
efficiently."

[https://pics.me.me/it-used-to-be-that-if-a-non-with-
modems-3...](https://pics.me.me/it-used-to-be-that-if-a-non-with-
modems-33836445.png)

------
alexchamberlain
I feel like a lot of conversations and articles recently speak to an
inadequate understanding of risk, and planning for risk.

Risk is made up of at least 2 or 3 components: what is the probability
something will happen? And, if it does happen, what is the impact and how will
you mitigate that impact?

For example, you may believe that a change to a website you are deploying has
a low probability of taking the website offline. If it is taken offline, it
may cost £X per hour in lost revenue, but you’ll leave the old version running
on a standby server, so it only takes a few minutes to switch back. That’s a
much more thorough understanding to 1 aspect of risk than “this rollout is low
risk”. Once you have that understanding, it’s reasonable to discuss how to
reduce the probability of an outage (better testing?), as well as how to
reduce the impact (staged rollout?) or to speed up the fix if it were to
happen (practise?).

In COVID terms, we should be discussing the impact of decisions in the light
of future pandemics. Could we invest now in reusable PPE, so that next time we
don’t have a global rush on the disposable stuff? Do we need to educate the
public more readily about reducing disease transmission to reduce the
likelihood of a pandemic in the first place? I’m not a doctor, so I have no
idea on the specifics, but the likelihood of any given pandemic will always be
low, so what is the impact of the decision if there is one and does that
impact need to be mitigated? (even if it is less efficient to do so...)

~~~
hahajk
You say risk has 2 or 3 components. The two you list, liklihood and severity,
are the two I usually hear. What is the third?

------
eointierney
Oh dear, I want to rant.

Efficiency is a dimensionless ratio of energy in to energy out. Economics, as
formulated, has little to say about efficiency and lots to say about
preference relations on utility functions (the texts do tend to hand-wavingly
waffle about how markets attain "efficiency" through hypothetically rational
actors maximizing utility functions etc., if you want a giggle check out the
"fundamental theorems of welfare").

I actually read the fine article, and didn't give up after the first couple of
paragraphs.

And in paragraph the third is introduced friction. I dunno, maybe it's because
I actually study science, but friction is a well defined thing and the
coefficient of same is another _dimensionless_ variable. It seems every time
economists want to incorporate a notion from science proper they go for the
dimensionless stuff because that way they don't have to go through the whole
tiresome rigmarole of ... dimensional analysis. It makes me feel like
Tantacrul criticising UI's (check him out on youtube, he's both funny and
informative).

Anyway, efficiency is not dangerous, efficiency will actually allow the
survivors of the Anthropocene Disaster make it through the coming disaster.
Slowing down is not a bad notion because it means most humans can spend more
time thinking (quite efficient actually) and less time haring around the
planet distracting themselves from the vapidity of their vanity. However life
is not better because it is slower, it's better because humans appreciate what
an extraordinary (literally and figuratively) opportunity it is to be alive.

As insurance policy against disaster stop listening to economists because they
observably don't have a clue (they can't make accurate and meaningful
predictions), instead study science, especially physics, because these
meanings are measured against reality and the resulting predictions are highly
reliable (TANSTAAFL < 2TD).

/rant

------
eafkuor
> We worship efficiency. Use less to get more. Same-day delivery. Multitask;
> text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps conversing on a
> third. Efficiency is seen as good. Inefficiency as wasteful.

Is this a US thing? I've lived in three different European countries and
nobody thinks this way. Efficiency and productivity are things I mostly just
read about on HN.

~~~
Tade0
It spills over to countries(like mine) enamoured of the American way of life,
but in a twisted manner.

I've worked for companies that saw overburdening people with responsibilities
as "efficient". On paper it was.

------
not2b
The article repeats a commonly believed myth about money being invented as a
replacement for barter. Adam Smith thought so, as do many economists, but they
forgot to ask anthropologists. See
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/barter-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/barter-
society-myth/471051/)

~~~
roughly
Strongly recommend "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber -
[https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612194196](https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612194196)
\- solid treatment of economic history from an anthropological viewpoint.

------
grawprog
I think this article is missing something. What it talks about is efficiency
of systems, which I think is different than efficiency in process.

Most of what the article talks about is making large systems more efficient
for the benefit of the system at large. I agree, this makes individual
components of the system more stressed and prone to catastrophic failure at
any one point in the system. People within that kind of efficient system are
pushed to their limits and breaking points.

However, making individual processes efficient i've found reduces stress on
the individuals involved in that process and allows for that slowing down
time.

The examples I can think of to back my points up

Previously I worked at a job where the actual process was incredibly
inefficient. I ended up working long hours and twice as hard as I needed to.
By the time I left that job, I'd increased the efficiency of the process to
the point where I was working reasonable hours, had some good downtime to
relax or take care of other things I'd had to neglect before.

The overall system at the place though was fairly inefficient, which was a
good thing. It meant we were usually a little ahead and could account for
things that went wrong.

Another recent example at my current job, we were working with a person who
tried to overhaul our inefficient, yet working system. Our processes were
efficient enough that we always got what we needed to do done. The person we
were working with tried to over engineer an 'efficient' schedule and system
for us that in the end caused far too much friction and they ended up losing
money and the business relationship between the company I work for and them
ended.

~~~
rhizome
> _I think this article is missing something._

The first word of the essay is "we," and it goes downhill from there.

------
SethMurphy
As an "Engineer" by job title, I strive for efficiency at work, and it
certainly creeps into my daily personal life also. With this pandemic I have
learned to realize that efficiency is not the end game for everything, and the
things you do efficiently should be chosen wisely. I have seen the the toll it
takes on those in my daily life more clearly, but have also seen how it can
lead to a safer less risky life during these times (i.e. shopping habits). It
is also clear that efficiencies built into our supply chains (i.e. food) have
become a liability as of recently. I do see this as a time of great reflection
on efficiency for both individuals and corporations or markets. I think this
re-evaluation will lead to some of the longest lasting changes to come out of
this pandemic.

------
leoh
>Why hadn’t we stockpiled key supplies and machines, built up hospital
capacity, or ensured the robustness of our supply chains? The reason, of
course, is that it would have been seen as inefficient and profit-robbing.

>Seen in this light, at least some inefficiency is like an insurance policy.
Think about your own situation. Every year that you don’t get into a car
accident and your house doesn’t burn down and you stay healthy, you could
think to yourself that you have ‘wasted’ your money on various pointless
insurance products, and that you’d be financially better off without all those
insurance premiums to pay.

This is a faulty claim. Traditional economic efficiency would say we _should_
stockpile medical supplies if it were more efficient for the markets in the
long-term, which it would have been. The issue here is that _governments_ and
experts didn't work together effectively (despite experts regularly noting the
possibility of a pandemic, for example, Gates et al.) and the fact that our
government generally isn't Keynesian. A quote (source: IMF
[https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.ht...](https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.htm)):

>Keynes argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather
than wait for market forces to fix things over the long run, because, as he
wrote, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

As it relates to Global Warming, for example, we have various options. We
could solve it by being "less efficient" (extracting less from the earth — and
in fact, a Keynesian approach to that would be taxation to slow growth in
harmful industries) but zoomed out, if we deal with global warming, we are
more efficient over the long run. Moreover, we want to be _efficient_ in our
development of green technologies.

The trouble isn't so much efficiency, it's zeroing in on making particular
processes efficient to the detriment of the whole across time and in the
present moment.

------
devilduck
Pace is relative and I think teams will generally average out in terms of
pace. Finding a pace that fits you and your style would be an essential factor
in having better work efficacy. My boss works really fast, works constantly
and is probably a workaholic, a pace which I can not and will not try to
match, so I have to work at my own pace and this throws off how project
planning goes because the PMs are used to his pace and don't give me an
optimal amount of time on projects, so I will find myself rushing which of
course makes me feel bad and triggers my impostor syndrome. Eventually this
pace will break down and become unmanageable for me and I'll have to quit,
which will hurt their production even more.

Pace and efficiency are definitely linked, but I don't necessarily know that I
think faster = more efficient. And there are folks mentioning stability, also
definitely linked here, but i think max efficiency would lean more into
stability than pace.

Linking pace with efficiency also seems to create the idea that "faster will
be the winner" which, you know, that's a whole thing, introducing competition
in an arguably healthy way.

I generally tend to find that emotion will usually come before logic. Building
something that could be considered efficient, but a feeling says "This could
be more efficient" and then logic jumps in and does the work.

Just some stream of consciousness writing here, food for thought maybe, or
extremely poor quality ideas!

------
ssivark
The fundamental problem is the inverted-U shape of payoffs to “optimizing” any
one factor (or a small subset of key focus areas). Beyond a point, you’re just
“overfitting” to the incorrect metric and underperforming in the truer sense.
Yeah, you might not have a metric for the “deeper value”... c’est la vie! Any
decision making approach that tries to ignore that problem/limitation is
simply stupid.

The other problem with prizing efficiency is that we often optimize for
efficiency under an _incorrect model_ of the situation (model-reality-
mismatch) — underweighting the likelihood of upsetting possibilities. That’s
essentially what the idea of “black swan”/“fat tails” is about. It’s not
really about statistics, unless you’re using a flawed and over-simplified
statistical model to ground your metric of efficiency.

IMHO the same problem underlies the approach/framework of behavioral
economics. In many situations, observed human behavior might be “irrational”
only because your model of reality is naively simplistic. _It shouldn’t be
surprising that a satisficing approach works better in reality than an
optimizing approach_ ; if it does sound surprising, consider that your
intuitions might be biased by an incorrect model of reality!

------
Taylor_OD
Of course not trying cram as much in as possible makes life better. However
tell that to a CEO who has built a business off an unsustainable, for a normal
person who wants to have a life outside of work, efficiency mindset.

~~~
082349872349872
The CEO gets it from above. Investors want to hold a portfolio with a
particular risk/return profile. In order to do that, the individual components
of the portfolio need to be running at higher risk, higher return profiles.

(Portfolio theory is why I am in favour of social safety nets. A worker wishes
a relatively safe risk/return profile will voluntarily choose a much higher
risk job when they can combine it with a low-risk backstop.)

------
stretchwithme
Efficiency is for machines. Effectiveness and creativity are for people.

And the more machines do laundry, the more effective and creative people can
choose to be. Or they can choose to watch TV.

------
CincinnatiMan
The problem is you can only slow down if everyone else does too, unless you're
willing to step down in "class" which a lot of people have trouble with.

~~~
TuringTest
> The problem is you can only slow down if everyone else does too

That's a myth propagated by people with a stake in the pie. Nature shows us
that you only need to be hyper-efficient and in a constant arms race if you're
competing for the _same_ resources.

Otherwise, you can adopt an opportunistic survival strategy that trades
efficiency for variety and a diversity of useable resources.

Of course, efficiency is the only option when there are companies trying to
grab _all_ the resources available, as in our current business setting. But
that's definitely not a healthy environment.

------
hosh
It something I learned recently about ecologies, and permaculture design. And
then I started applying it to my personal life. Instead of heroically
finishing things, to instead, work on them in a way that is more like the
regenerative and resilient processes from permaculture design.

~~~
r00fus
I'd love to hear you elaborate on this in more detail.

~~~
hosh
I'm still working it out myself, so this is all work in progress.

I have a teenage stepdaughter doing online schooling. I had been working
remote for years now. It took a long time to work out how things work with my
wife -- she is a stay-at-home mom. Work and family life intrude on each other,
and even more so this year with the pandemic.

I used to burn out big time, and then, I burn out in smaller doses. In the
last burnout cycle, my wife miscarried, and that spent both my wife spinning.
So I am not entire sure at this point how much of this is like when I
functioned at peak.

The things that I have been doing:

\- I try to have a few tasks I think I can accomplish and try to do them. But
because the family life can be so disruptive, I've learned that I'm not really
going to be as productive as I am at the peak, and just be ok with it.

\- I try not to be a blocker for either my teammates or for my family.

\- I have a garden. I enjoy it. I mainly do work with it in the morning and
evening. Sometimes I am exhausted (especially in Phoenix summer hell season).
In general, though, it recharging.

\- I practice neigong, and I finally got to the point where I can reliably
cycle something (which I will not get into technical details about unless
you're also a practitioner. It is a rabbit hole). But suffice it to say, it
rebalances the vital energy being distributed among my physical, emotional,
and mental states. Part of the burnout was exhausting everything mentally,
repeatedly, until there is just nothing left.

\- When I push through something, it is for small things. Those small things
might chain together. Past a certain point, it is better to go for a walk.

\- I can tell when my brain is just exhausted. It is better to take a nap.
I'll warn my wife that I'm not really present during grocery shopping. She
doesn't always like that (it is one of the times we go out to do something
together that is not in the house). I might take MCT with some mixed nuts.

\- I don't use caffeine -- no coffee or tea. The closest I get is with
roiboos, and even its 1mg caffeine can affect me. Fortunately, the caffiene
content of chocolate does not affect me as much.

The part I am working out is how to live in a way that follows the
permaculture ethics -- care of earth, care of people, and fair share. It is
the last of these that has made me realize that the ambition of unbounded
growth, whether for society, or for myself, is simply impractical. It may be
strange to say it on a forum that was created for people who were or are
interested in doing a Ycombinator startup and getting rich from winning the
startup lottery ... but I've come to realize that it is not how I want to live
or relate to the world.

I used to practice minimalism ... but now I realize that is just a stepping
stone. It's investing in regenerative and resilient systems. The garden is
part of my long-term effort to create a perennial food forest on my property.
There is a lot of tech and "shiny" that I realize I don't really need to get.

And while I know that recently, I would keep comparing other people's cars as
status / wealth symbols, it is ultimately meaningless. And fortunately, I know
what I need to do to get my mind to cease doing that.

This is a very unusual way for me to approach this subject. I usually start
out with a radical position: inequality and the wealth gap is _intrinsic_ to
modern civilizations, and it rests upon the notion that wealth is something to
be extracted from the earth, and access controlled. "Efficiency" is how you
maximize profit, as if that is the only way to optimize things. Therefore,
there will never be any system of economics and free market (or command
economy) that will ever take the well-being of the earth and the people into
account.

From this perspective, I think it is insanity. Why would anyone want to
participate in a system where there will be guaranteed losers? (Because the
few exceptions give the false hope that you might be the exception).

It therefore follows that, if I want to participate in a different kind of a
"game", then I will have to live my life by those other principles. And so,
I'm trying that with my current work. To give an receive my fair share. To
reinvest capital gained from extractive wealth and convert it to regenerative
wealth. To not tie my personal sense of self-worth into status or wealth
symbols.

------
noisy_boy
Having moved from an inefficient setting to an efficient environment, I have
noticed a reduction of tolerance and threshold for getting stressed when
things don't go smoothly. There is something to be said for the buffer that
"inefficiency" provides.

~~~
rhizome
All you have to do is look to history for the movements and societies that
have put "efficiency" on a pedestal to gauge the value and practicality.

There was a major one in the 20th century. It did not go well.

------
jlarocco
I think the article is drawing the wrong conclusions. In every example given,
the problem isn't "too much efficiency", but failing to plan for unlikely
situations.

Making something inefficient doesn't magically increase preparedness.

~~~
mcguire
No, but maximizing efficiency doesn't necessarily increase preparedness
either. Being prepared has costs.

~~~
jlarocco
Sure, preparedness has costs, but the article makes the point poorly, IMO.

Many of the arguments are non sequiturs. The last example is particularly bad.
On an icy road, it doesn't matter if a car gets 100 mpg or 10 mpg - speed and
traction are far more important factors.

------
Dumblydorr
Doesn't the author miss that efficiency and deceleration (i.e. slow down) are
in some respects orthogonal? It is possible to more efficiently go the same
distance at the same speed, but use less resources. It is also possible to
both slow down and increase efficiency which can synergistically decrease
resource use.

Take the aluminum can. Beverage companies heavily innovated, reduced aluminum
use, saved resources, emissions, and consumers get a win with lighter cans and
less environmental pollution and carbon emission.

------
Pick-A-Hill2019
"... what of the COVID-19 pandemic? Why hadn’t we stockpiled key supplies and
machines, built up hospital capacity, or ensured the robustness of our supply
chains? The reason, of course, is that it would have been seen as inefficient
and profit-robbing. Money spent on masks and gowns gathering dust in a
warehouse could always be put to more ‘productive’ use in the marketplace."

 _This_ is what matters right now.

------
chasd00
the article doesn't make sense to me

when making decisions:

"we should be asking which option will give us good-enough results under the
widest range of future states of the world"

doesn't that lead you right back to the struggle for the most efficient way to
determine the optimal "good-enough" answer?

Also, the article talks about efficiency but efficiency of what exactly? What
if you're very efficient at a maintaining a relaxed and happy lifestyle?

~~~
Double_Cast
Suppose you're playing a videogame. Your character just leveled up. You can
upgrade either Attack or HP.

* "Upgrade Attack" is more efficient. It allows you to beat the game faster. But since your HP is low, you can't afford to make mistakes (get hit).

* "Upgrade HP" is more robust. It increases your damage-buffer, which allows you to absorb more mistakes without dying. But if you make zero mistakes, you won't beat the game as quickly as if you'd upgraded Attack.

IRL the dichotomy is often "income vs wealth", "velocity vs displacement",
"throughput vs latency", "strength vs endurance", etc.

------
lowracle
I think this is confusing efficiency with overfitting. A lot of the problems
described in the article arise due to overfitting models to the historical
data. We overfited supply chain management because covid doesn't happen often,
we overfited credit modeling because chain reaction of default doesn't happen
often... We actually weren't efficient enough, we ignored tail events.

------
acd
I think life is about having good experiences! That is why traveling and
visiting new places and food is great, your mind gets to experience news
things. Running around in 80 mph+ well you tend too miss things is my
experience. Life is usually not about maximum efficiency unless you are a 100m
sprint runner. Robots and programs can run as fast as they want and automation
do us favors, however us humans should not strive to do the same.

Compare Junk food, you get full quickly, nutrients in junk food is usually
bad. You can instead choose to have the experience of slowly cooking a
nutritious meal. Eating slowly cooked food with your family and friends is
often better. Usually stress comes with running around too fast so you tend to
consume not healthy food and you then after a while gain weight. I am not
saying consuming junk food, or running fast is bad every now and then but
doing so all the time you might miss slower better experiences...

Same goes for buying local vs buying cheap stuff which does not last long.
Often buying local is better for the environment.

------
WesolyKubeczek
It’s an interesting definition of „efficient”.

In my book, you are efficient if you did 8 hours worth of work in 4, did it
right on the first try, went home early, and had enough mental capacity left
for hobbies and family.

60 hour weeks are not efficient. Busywork is not efficient. So called
„productivity” software is more than often not.

------
mchusma
This article has a horrible title, and some highly misleading content. It
represents "efficiency" as things like "not buying insurance" in a dangerous
fashion. There are VERY few serious people who think that.

"All things being equal" efficiency is always good. (e.g. if an identical task
can be done for 1/2 the energy - good) "All things being equal" slowing down
does not necessarily make life better. (Cleaning up after an oil spill is
something we probably want fast.)

All things are not equal, and you have to make a series of tradeoffs.

How much risk are you willing to take? How much enjoyment do you get out of a
task?

The author is of course correct that optimizing efficiency at the sake of all
else is typically a problem. But to misrepresent efficiency (the key to our
modern age) is not quite fair to the term.

------
gmuslera
Systems in real life are complex. Limiting them to just one dimension on which
they are efficient may leave out factors that make them work at all, or just
better.

But if you really know every and all components and criteria that may be
applied to them, you might improve efficience. Good luck with that.

------
brentjanderson
Reminds me of this piece from Seth Godin on the importance of building slack
into our lives: [https://seths.blog/2019/06/investing-in-
slack/](https://seths.blog/2019/06/investing-in-slack/)

(Not the chat app)

~~~
r00fus
One of my RSS feeds is Seth's Blog. Nice mindfulness tips and perspective
tehre.

------
Tepix
I came across this related blog post the other day:

„in the name of taking it slow“
[https://www.voyageofthezephyr.com/blog/takingitslow](https://www.voyageofthezephyr.com/blog/takingitslow)

------
xondono
Since when multitasking is efficient?

There’s a big difference between being productive and being busy.

------
aaron695
> We worship efficiency. <> _Multitask_ ; text on one device while emailing on
> a second, and perhaps conversing on a third. Efficiency is seen as good.
> Inefficiency as wasteful.

The premise is total bullshit. No one thinks multitasking is good.

Barry Schwartz consistently doesn't get it, but he's good at presenting
"Unpopular opinion's" style articles.

People say multi-tasking is great! But it's not! Upvote if you agree.

Efficiency is why your baby doesn't get stuck in the womb killing two people.

Bot sniping on GrubHub is scary, this is an efficiency that actually worries
me. But it's not within this articles scope.

------
david_draco
Insurance is the opposite of a lottery. If you think buying lottery tickets
are a waste of money because you lose out in the long run, the same argument
should lead you to think having insurance is a good thing.

~~~
yathern
I think you have it backwards - insurance and lottery are (sort of) equal. In
the long term, you'll lose money in the lottery. You'll also lose money paying
for insurance.

If you have extraordinary "good luck", you may come out ahead in the lottery.
And if you have extraordinary "bad luck" you may come out ahead in insurance.

Insurance of course has a more practical value, and a much better return on
investment (even if it averages negative returns)

~~~
pdonis
_> You'll also lose money paying for insurance._

Only if you put zero value on the peace of mind that comes with having
insurance against risks that, if they happened, would bankrupt you. But if you
put zero value on that, you wouldn't buy insurance.

~~~
pottertheotter
It's the same with the lottery. If you understand that the cash expected value
is lower than the cost of the ticket, but you get some value from having
"played" and the net is at least equal to the price of the ticket, it's not
irrational to buy a lottery ticket.

~~~
pdonis
This is true, but the kind of value being provided is different. Peace of mind
is not the same thing as entertainment.

~~~
brlewis
Maybe you all can agree that insurance and lottery are the same in that only a
fraction of consumers come out ahead, and are opposites in terms of smart vs.
stupid.

~~~
pdonis
_> Maybe you all can agree that insurance and lottery are the same in that
only a fraction of consumers come out ahead_

Only a fraction of the consumers come out ahead _if we only consider monetary
value_. But the whole reason insurance and the lottery exist in the first
place is that there are other kinds of value besides monetary value. In the
case of insurance, it's peace of mind. In the case of the lottery, it's
whatever entertainment value comes from being able to visualize yourself
winning, even if your chances of actually doing so are tiny.

------
FpUser
>"Multitask; text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps
conversing on a third."

Result - shitty content of texting, emails and shitty conversation.

I am not sure who in their right mind actually advocates that.

~~~
allenu
The problem could be twofold: 1) our tools push us towards multitasking.
Notifications pop up and there's a sense of immediacy where you need to deal
with it now (texting back) or it will get "lost" in the stream of new
notifications, never to be dealt with. 2) people today expect everything, even
communications, to be responsive, leading to a low content response
immediately as opposed to a high quality one later.

For #1, modern tools like Slack favor immediate responses since it's not set
up to treat conversations or requests as manipulable items. With email you can
drag and drop into folders and deal with them one by one. With slack, once
you've "seen" a message, there's really no way to put it somewhere to remind
yourself to respond. (If there is, it's not obvious to me.)

~~~
naavis
You can at least click on the context menu of a message and select ”Remind me”
to set a reminder about the it. But yeah, I do agree with you. Slack messages
are less ”manipulable”.

------
AndrewUnmuted
The author writes,

> Arguably, a little friction to slow us down would have enabled both
> institutions and individuals to make better financial decisions.

But the article fails to bring up the US's rate of interest. If interest rates
were allowed to have risen, this would have been just the sort of "slowdown"
that the author is looking for.

I find it remarkable that this article could be so insightful, yet lack even a
single mentioning of this simple and fundamental fact. Rising interest rates
are the market's implementation of precisely what the author is looking for.

------
annoyingnoob
The author lost me at the end with the car analogy. Who drives fast on icy
roads? I try to drive the right speed for conditions. I use the right amount
of efficiency for the job.

------
voidhorse
It’s telling that ancient philosophers didn’t include many of the things we
value in our hyper-corporate society in their definitions of a _good life_.
Leisure (N.B. _not entertainment_ ) is dead in America, and it has significant
consequences. I wish it weren’t the case, but I really do find that I do my
best thinking when I give myself time to do nothing or go for an aimless walk.
Efficiency as a virtue should be reserved for machines, not human beings.

------
neycoda
It appears the definition of efficiency here is just "fast" which is not just
what efficiency is. I've worked with plenty of inefficient codebases, that
were intrinsicly fragile, and difficult to work with... and cleaning them up
made them more efficient and robust. Efficiency is about doing the most amount
of things in the least amount of steps, not just minimizing features and
making things fast at the expense of stability.

------
smabie
> The creation of ‘option markets’ means that you don’t have to go to the
> trouble of buying a stock that you’re going to be selling soon anyway. You
> can just promise to buy it, and then sell it at a price and date specified
> by the option contract.

Options, like their name implies, aren't a promise to do anything, they
provide the right but not obligation to buy or sell at a certain price.

------
skybrian
Note that in situations where exponential growth is possible, lower latency
means much faster growth, and this can easily happen faster than you have time
to react to.

Exponential growth at 5% a week is a lot different than 5% a day or 5% a
minute. Social media would be less dangerous if there were more automatic
delays before a message you post appears to others.

------
sidhu1f
There was a time when GCC had to be installed by compiling from source. Doing
so involved compiling the GCC source with the native compiler, and then using
the resulting binary to compile the GCC source again.

I remember the install instructions advising "festina lente". The Latin phrase
translates to "make haste slowly".

------
hinkley
I think we need more hobbies. Maybe some anthropology classes as well.

There is, for instance, a certain give-and-take in classical Japanese garden
aesthetics. In a formal English or French garden, almost all you can see,
everywhere you look, is evidence of human hands. Since no plant is in anything
you could mistake for its natural state, you are practically beaten over the
head by the presence of the unseen gardener. Look at what I made nature do.
What piece of work is a man.

It's a dynamically unstable system.

Meanwhile the Japanese garden is a dynamically stable system. The plants are
allowed to 'win' in many cases that either support the gardener's goals, or
are simply not worth the effort required to win the argument. _It 's more
efficient to let the system do what is in its nature than to try and stop
it._. If you know how to look, you can see the gardener everywhere, over-
emphasizing what would have happened without them, in such a way that you see
the plant first, and the work second. It is organic, with an editor.

You might see a similar philosophy in Judo. You are steering what is there,
letting the subject of your efforts do most of the heavy lifting for you. It
is quite efficient, but not in the antiseptic way we sometimes imagine that
efficiency should possess.

TL;DR: most of us have no idea what efficiency looks like, and we make a
mockery of it while trying to pursue it.

------
CurtHagenlocher
This reminds me of Frank Herbert's Bureau of Sabotage
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Sabotage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Sabotage)).

------
josefrichter
Aren’t these ideas well known in the field of economy? They also don’t sound
too alien for anyone marginally acquainted with psychology (e.g. by means of
watching any of Mr. Schwartz’s talks).

------
shard
The mix of font styles in the PSYCHE title strip on top really bothers me. Are
there any typography experts in the house that can explain what concepts could
be behind that choice?

------
m3kw9
They should say “Efficiency” is dangerous. Actual efficiency is not bad at
all. Say focusing on one task till is done is sometimes the most efficient way
to do a task.

------
shivenigma
Why not move fast and break things? I think it is a trade-off between being
efficient and breaking something and being stable.

------
vonwoodson
This is the most important lesson on 2020. But, how do I find an employer who
will agree with me?...

------
markus_zhang
I think we need to think about long time efficiency instead of short period
ones.

------
zerop
Efficiency would not create any big invention. It's a big problem.

------
known
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil" -Knuth

------
roenxi
This article is badly mid-attributing why these systems are 'efficient' in the
way they are.

The lessons in the '08 crisis were crystal clear - anyone who planned for
difficult times and left a contingency lost out. Then look at 2020 - one of
the first thing the US government did was bail out the financial system.
Bailing out banks is almost a pavlovian response at this point.

That is why there is no robustness built in; because the capitalists have
correctly identified that the they will not be allowed to go broke. Businesses
are optimising based on an expected government response. What use is
contingency planning when the contingency isn't allowed to eventuate?
Excessively risky ventures are promoted in the good time and buffered in the
bad.

------
zelly
Reads like GPT-3. Lots of words to say nothing.

------
patja
Reminds me of the book Slack by Tom DeMarco

------
KrishMunot
Can someone explain what this means?

------
AcerbicZero
TL;DR Author who is paid to write words, gets confused when a word has more
than one meaning.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency)
=/= "efficiency"

------
cblconfederate
And what's the most efficient way to slow down?

------
ShapesOfEmpathy
I study empathy, and have often said that efficiency is the opposite of
empathy. Whatever we want to call it, the human element is overlooked when we
strive for the single dimension of efficiency. Hannah Arendt famously talked
about the banality of evil. During the Holocaust, the counting and
categorizing of people was flattening or reducing to that important human
element we all share.

------
throWaythxMod
Say you use the tips here(
[https://efficiencyiseverything.com/time/](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/time/))
to save time, particularly the first example about shoes.

You are going to have more time to do anything, relax, think, clean, whatever.

Why would spending more time putting on shoes be better?

------
kevrone
TL;DR.

------
swayvil
Striving for efficiency is bad science.

The dream takes precedence over the reality.

------
trappist
This article suffers from a misconception of efficiency. A car that gets more
miles per gallon than another is more fuel-efficient, not more efficient. A
system of local optimums is an inefficient system. The author asks us to make
life _more_ efficient by considering efficiency in a broader scope. Efficiency
is still good.

