The word “efficiency” has seen an increase in use lately. But what exactly is it, and is it always a good thing?
While the term efficiency has been in the news recently, it is hardly a new phenomenon. When you were a student, you may have been encouraged to study more efficiently. At work, you may have been praised for being efficient as an employee.
The general idea is that you should get from point A to point B in as few steps as possible. If you can do it in, say, three steps, then doing in five steps is less desirable. Steps 4 and 5, then, are wasteful and unnecessary. Three steps is optimal, the most efficient route.
Of course, this is an overly simplified example, and real life tends to be more more complicated.
For example, let’s pretend that the project can be done in three steps, but you are more likely to make mistakes than if you were to do it in five. If you need to do the entire project over again regularly, then is three steps really more efficient than five?
Some endeavors are independent from the normal rules of efficiency. Let’s consider creative or artistic expressions. Is it possible or even desirable to write a poem more efficiently? Can creativity be regulated in some way? When brainstorming, might it not be more helpful to think in unconventional ways, even if they happen to be conventionally inefficient?
In other cases, a certain amount of inefficiency is fundamental to the process. In science, it is regularly impossible to predict how an experiment will unfold. A scientist might have to try dozens or even hundreds of approaches to problem solving before finding the right one. Each invalid attempt is not a waste, as it may very well illuminate a rule or behavior that was previously unknown, which obviously has value.
Doing things quickly is the right thing to do in some cases. But not all. Can you think of examples from your life where being inefficient was better? And if so, isn’t that approach more efficient after all?
Related questions: What is the value of inefficiency? How can we be more productive? What is waste?