On Efficiency

It’s been a minute. I’ve since left my job, started a new company, gotten the support of some incredible people, and moved cities. It’s been tough. The pursuit of excellence often is, I suppose. A quote that’s stuck with me recently:

The fear of judgement keeps mediocrity well defended.

The single biggest bottleneck in my life is time. Efficiency is what I’m naturally bad at but have the greatest need for right now.

I leave you with an email I wrote nearly two summers ago on the same topic. Onwards and upwards.

7/13/24

I have nothing particular to write to you, so I’m hoping that something coherent will follow below. 

I spent last night looking, and failing, for the bookmark my father gave me alongside a travel guide for San Francisco Bay Area, a mildly jovial gift that I like to think of as his awkward way of saying he was proud of me. That bookmark was to follow and end up in my copy of The Creative Act, which I’m glad to report is marginally better read than it was last week.

I couldn’t find it. I presume it’s misplaced, but in frustration I tried in vain to use a boarding pass from my flight to Zurich as a replacement, but the paper was too thin, flimsy and otherwise ill suited for the task. 

I, in my half consumeristic, half pretentious but otherwise frustrated manner, began scouring the internet looking for whatever other hipsters online considered the holy grail of bookmarks. Weirdly enough, apart from a French company selling $400 oversized paper clips there isn’t much discussion on the topic. Who would’ve thought?

The definition of optimization, (a word that apparently is only in popular usage since the 50s, by the way) is:

“The action of making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource.”

I tend to be overzealous in my attempts at optimization. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in reducing friction of effort. I think it’s partly why I’m a good product designer, they’re often the same skill set in motion. 

There is, I’m starting to realize, more than one measure of optimization. Instinctually I always assumed it was a singular measure: the more efficient a task is done (usually, measured temporally). However, the most optimized parts of my life are often frustrating in reality. 

For example, having to move to the living room to watch TV is a theoretical burden. But solving it by putting a TV in every room and bath in your house, while reducing friction to watch TV, is not an elegant solution to the problem. That’s the second measure. 

By having all my belongings in one place, all three suitcases worth, I’m staring at a pile of solutions to problems in my life that are theoretically solved, but really add up to their own problem after all. Reading by kindle is convenient, but boring. Reading on my tablet does nothing to save my eyes from fatigue, and it’s too tempting to be distracted. 

I’ve been trying to find an optimal way to get some cognitive rest, and ended up devising 8 different ways to consume written books across different devices and audiobook players. It’s hyper-optimized, but none of the solutions are elegant. I’d rather have 1 screwdriver that works everywhere, than have a full bit set for every size. 

This was a lot of half construed thoughts. But I do wonder, what elegant solutions are sitting waiting for me eagerly awaiting to replace my frustratingly hyper-optimized belongings?

Luke

Sent from my iPhone