Inefficiency - 041

Written By Jake Kahana
 

Efficiency Obsessed

I'm not paying attention.

This freelance design project I took on has me rushing to get to the end– send the invoice, get paid, be done.

I feel it with my kids some days too. During a "you cut the strawberries wrong" meltdown, I'm thinking, "can we just get to bed time already?"

This time in my life is particularly challenging. Two kids under 4, moving into an old house that needs work, running my own company during a time of global transition…aiming to get to the end of this phase of life.

I'm a victim of a culture indoctrinated with the ideals of efficiency.

Everything is designed for efficiency.

No wasting time. No wasted energy.

Next day shipping. Food delivery. Instant photography. User-friendly. No touch. Algorithm. AI.

A lot of this obsession with efficiency comes from 200+ years ago. With the introduction of machines to our work, the industrial revolution connected our worth to how much we could produce. And the more efficient we were, the more productive we worked, the more valuable we became.

In so much of my work and research at Caveday, we're finding that multitasking, which often FEELS more efficient and productive, is not. Multitasking leads to more mistakes, shortens our attention span, and drives us away from our more important work in favor of easy tasks.

In celebrating efficiency, we may be missing something. Annie Dillard said "how we spend our days is how we spend our lives." ...and how am I spending my life if I'm rushing just to get to the end of every day?

Ok now I'm paying attention.

This month, I want to explore inefficiency.

What would happen if we were not optimizing for efficiency, but instead, optimizing for experience?

Skip the shortcut.

Let's take the scenic route.

 
 

The Cost of Convenience

Early in the pandemic, we started shopping for our groceries online.

The app makes it feel like there are unlimited options.

27 kinds of apples. Dozens of cheeses. Like, a million cereals.

And then I drive there and someone puts it in my trunk.

Or even better, it all just shows up at my doorstop.

While all of this is incredibly convenient, I couldn't help notice all the waste that creates the convenience. Tons of plastic padding and ice packs for one single bag of frozen peas. The manual labor that went into shopping, packing, labeling, and delivering my food– not to mention the labor that went into picking and packaging the food and getting it to the store in the first place.

Convenience seems to come with a hidden side effect:

Waste.

So much of our waste is purposefully invisible.

Hiding it emphasizes the efficiency and ease of it all.

But behind every lower price or faster service is a cost.

Sometimes it's physical waste. Sometimes (oftentimes) there's a human cost.

We know that climate change is real, and that technology and apps are pushing us towards convenience. Sometimes those two things feel at odds with one another.

As we think more about sustainability and our future, we can reconsider what "good design" or "better service" means.

Because how efficient is something really, when it creates so much waste?

 
 

Inconvenience

We visited my parents this month for the first time in two years. Part of my time was spent clearing out my old room.

Some of my favorite finds were old journals, high school yearbooks, and photo albums full of my commentary.

The best stuff, however, were the old letters.

Pen pals and love notes, breakup letters and postcards.

I'm sentimental, I know, but I cherish these. The length of some these letters makes my hand hurt just thinking about the time taken to write them. But they're all an act of inefficiency.

In a world where even texting comes with emojis and acronyms (excuse me, abbrevs), I have to say that speed is not always what’s valued in messages.

Birthday wishes, for example, get less meaningful.

Job offers or big news.

Or love notes.

Speed and efficiency aren't always helpful when it comes to relationships.

(Think about your own preferences in the bedroom.)

Friendship is, in itself, inconvenient. We go out of our way to share secrets that can be weaponized later. We start conversations without knowing where they're going. We meet for long walks and coffees. Make secret handshakes and silly inside jokes. We sit on phone calls that serve no "productive" purpose.

These acts allow us to explore, wander, and go deeper.

While we optimize for efficiency at work or in our technology, in order to build relationships and community, we need more acts of inefficiency.

Inefficient doesn’t have to mean broken or wasted.

It can mean being more human.

 
 

Friction, digital and otherwise.

I eat a lot of fruit and almonds when I visit my parents.

It's a weird observation but it's relevant when I think about kitchen efficiency. In the center of the room is the table, always with a giant bowl of fresh fruit. So when I'm hungry it's easy just to grab a banana or orange.

Next to the doorway in and out of the kitchen sits a candy dish full of almonds (always full, my dad probably refills it 3x/day). Coming in, I'm likely to grab a small handful. On my way out, too.

The sweets in my parents house, on the other hand, are much harder to find.

Candy is in the farthest cabinet from the door, all the way at the bottom.

Ice cream is in the fridge in the garage.

Those extra steps, in the design world is called friction.

I use it all the time when I'm designing a website, ad, or app.

More steps means people won't do it (unsubscribe, cancel, stop).

Make things easy and they're likely to choose it (buy, sign up, subscribe, add to cart).

As the designers of our own life, we can remove friction to change our habits.

Leaving exercise clothes out the night before.

Put out fruit, hide candy. (Thanks, mom)

We can add friction too.

I've recently experimented with my phone, making it black and white and hiding all the apps from the homescreen. It makes it so much less exciting and desirable. It's much less like a toy and more like a tool.

The thing about technology is that many of our actions are influenced by designers who implement friction.

They're (ok. We're) trying to get people to take actions that help the business by making them easier.

Because when an easier choice is available, most of us we hardly do what we prefer.

We just do what we perceive to be most efficient. 

 
 

Where Are We Going?

The best way to ruin a vacation is to overplan.

Having a full schedule and calendar has the best intention– to make the most of a new place. (Or, to be more on-theme, to be a maximally efficient traveler.) No wasted time.

But we all know that the most memorable parts of traveling are the spontaneous, serendipitous, random local recommendation, last-minute change of plans to swerve.

Those memories don't happen when our calendars are full.

When we overbook ourselves, we miss opportunities.

Our lives are full of tangents, ephemeral relationships and experiences that ultimately drive us to where we end up. Our paths to where we are going are rarely direct.

And in the end, who really cares where we end up?

I know I'm not going to be bragging in my rocking chair that I got to where I was going faster. I hope to be sharing the stories of the journey there.

So why rush it?

––––––––

Thanks for taking the time to read this Email Refrigerator.

I know it was long, but especially this month, it was part of the concept. We are drawn to efficiency– it's one of the reasons Twitter and Instagram are so attractive. But inefficiency is how we explore, go deeper, learn... it's how things stay human.

I'm so grateful for your willingness to be inefficient with me today in reading this and replying with any thoughts you might want to discuss with me.

Until next month...

–Jake

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Jake Kahana http://www.jakekahana.com
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