I think, collectively, we’ve reached a breaking point. Maybe “breaking” is too strong a word. Perhaps we’ve reached a turning point. I know I have. As I turn 38 years old and reflect on the things I’ve learned, about the world as I see it and myself, I’ve realized two things that will definitely make me better off, but I think can help others as well.
And so I have two pleas for myself and for you, dear reader: be less efficient and take more risks.
Be Less Efficient
In our need to be more “efficient” (think AI, the current gutting of our government, or even the process-heavy organization you probably work for), we run multiple risks. For one, eventually efficiency circles back around to inefficiency. Efficiency also tends to replace actual know-how.
Efficiency ==> Inefficiency: There are only so many efficiency gains you can make before you tip back to inefficiency. Perhaps this isn’t a great example, but I find it illustrative of the point I’m trying to make. Technology has gotten too simplified. In the constant streamlining of our technology, ostensibly to make it more efficient, it’s actually gotten less efficient. Before, there were dedicated buttons for each task you needed, say, your phone to perform. Now, because we’ve moved to single buttons on things like iPhone or even appliances like washers and driers, it actually takes longer to perform the task you want to accomplish. The greatest annoyance is my life is that I have to hold the power button on my headphones to get them to turn on or off. It’s only a few seconds, but it’s a waste of a few seconds and it pisses me off to no end.
Efficiency in Place of Actual Understanding: I’ve noticed this at work, primarily, and I imagine it’s a problem across most (if not all) industries. This is most noticeable with the rise of AI, but there is an argument to be made it’s gone on for much longer than that. Instead of doing the difficult work of research or even just reading to understand what it is we’re responding to, or meant to be doing, we have increasingly relied on technology and process to do that heavy lifting for us.
We use AI to summarize articles for us. We lean on process in place of seeking understanding of what we’re meant to do and why. While these things may lead to efficiency gains, are they actually helping us? Are we learning and growing when we rely on technology or process to guide us through the hard parts? What happens as technology gets less efficient or, as in the case of AI, less accurate? What happens when processes become too heavy? I don’t know, but without the understanding gained from doing the difficult parts of *insert task here*, we may lose the ability to do *insert task here* at all.
As a corollary to this, people that lean too hard on technology or process also deflect blame. It can’t be there fault if the process failed, right? If the AI didn’t have the right answer, how could they?
Be Less Efficient: I think the answer is simple, and that’s to do things the hard way. If only to understand how something is done manually, so that if a machine or process you didn’t design fucks up, you’ll be able to recognize it and fix it. That said, I do think there is value in taking the long way to accomplishing a task, sometimes. To really sit with something and work it over in your head gives you a familiarity with it that can make the eventual accomplishment that much more satisfaction.
The other argument here is that doing things the hard way generally leads to better quality. Sure, you can use AI to generate a first draft of a novel or what have you, but it’s going to be hot trash. And because you didn’t do the thinking necessary to turn a good idea into great prose, you won’t know how to fix it. In my line of work I think of this as the “baseline problem.” In my day job we often have subject matter experts helping us to write proposals. Our number one request when starting up a new proposal is to provide baseline from prior proposals to use as a starting point for the writing. The problem is that prior proposals exist in their own context for their own customers, which is likely different than the context or customer we’re currently working within. And so it becomes more work to edit the baseline than if we had just done the work up front to outline and write a crappy (but still better than baseline) first draft.
Personally, I find satisfaction in doing things the hard way. I like the sensation of, say, mowing my lawn with a push mower over a sitting mower. Or handwashing dishes over putting them in the dishwasher. There is a tactile sensation that gives me a sense of being connected with the moment, with the task, or maybe (at the risk of getting too highfalutin), the world. I feel this way about nearly everything, personally and professionally.
Take More Risks
I’ve been risk-averse most of my life. Instead of leaving my hometown at 18 to attend an arts school that had accepted me for creative writing, I stayed local. Instead of going to California and leveraging some contacts I had made to couch-surf and take a run at working in film, I went to DC. So on and so forth, decisions big and small.
Around last July, maybe early August, I decided to take a sabbatical from work. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time and kept putting off. There was always some reason not to do it–money, primarily. But with the cancer scare and the way my time keeps slipping away from me, I decided I had to. There would never be a good time, so why not just do it?
Today is day 3 of my sabbatical.
There are lots of risks. Money, for sure. But also because, for the first time in my life, I’m prioritizing myself and the things I want to accomplish. Which means, for the first time in my life, I have no excuses for not accomplishing the goals I set. Over the next four months I am responsible only to myself, which is sort of a scary place to be. If I lack discipline and don’t accomplish the goals I laid out, will I have more regrets as my time is once again eaten up after I go back to work? Will I be faced with regret, or the the knowledge that perhaps I’ll just never be successful at the things I thought I cared about so deeply since I was young?
Doesn’t matter. None of that matters right now. What matters is that I’m taking the risk to do it. Whatever the outcome is, I’ll have learned something.
And so I implore you, too, to take a risk. I can’t in good conscience recommend a risk that could upend your life (I’m certainly not doing that), but maybe you want to find a new job and are afraid of a potential pay cut or that you won’t be able to find one, or you want to buy a house and are worried about interest rates or return on investment. Maybe you want to ask a neighbor over for dinner and aren’t sure they’ll accept or that you’ll get along. Maybe you, like me, want to write something that feels true to you and are afraid it could be too revealing or that it will be rejected by those that read it.
It doesn’t matter. Do it, anyway.
It’s a cliché, but life is short. Just under three years ago I wasn’t sure I’d ever see 38. With most things in life, in failure there is always opportunity to recover.
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