‘Stop obsessing over ideas of efficiency’

Over centuries, its ‘use’ may have turned it into one of the most loved veggies but in a stress-ridden society, where the focus is on wellness, carbs are a strict no no.

It’s with stories like these that Edward Tenner weaves a narrative on efficiency that has become a buzzword in the office space. The tendency is to provide more for less and market it likewise. Even as big data and IoT are set to raise efficiency levels, it might be prudent to pause.

The problems of efficiency today are less drastic but more chronic. They can also prolong the evils that they were intended to solve. Tenner tells us that in the late 19th century an attempt to copy a masterpiece of the French 75-mm lethal artillery design only led to prolonging World War I rather than shortening it. Tenner uses examples such as these to emphasise that efficiency can prove to be a trap when the opposition copies it. He also goes on to point out that being too reliant on technology can prove to be disastrous even if the stated objective is to improve efficiency. He also argues that it is the obsession with efficiency that could make people less efficient.

This, he explains, comes to the fore when hospitals setting off hundreds of device-registered alarms can lead to a ‘crying wolf,’ syndrome. To rule out such issues will mean investment of time and in the process the real patients are neglected.

Tenner favours the need to “eliminate misidentification” but at the same time, algorithms that are dictating the course of everything today need to be contextualised. “It can be wasteful to try to avoid all waste,” he says, narrating the instances of classics like Moby Dick or the Harry Potter, series that had to go through the rigmarole of being turned down by many publishers.

Tenner’s solution is to pay attention to intuition and human skills. Rather than becoming too reliant on technology in the name of simplifying life, it is better to exert the ‘physical’ and mental faculties to derive efficient outcomes. Check out this talk to learn more about ‘inspired inefficiency,’ a term coined by him, backed by a seven-step approach help one get rid of the obsession with efficiency.