For The Sake of Making It Easier
Oh the inventions and processes we humans devise in order to make life easier and to take back our time from performing tasks. But, oh the crimes we commit to make a life easier, to be a bit lazy and avoid thought or work. When is making things easier right and when is it wrong?
My mind has revisited this topic from time to time ever since I read the book, The Four Hour Work Week a long time ago. Yes, engineering a goose that lays golden eggs and outsourcing everything to relax on a beach and drink from coconuts all day sounds really nice. But what’s next? Wouldn’t you eventually get bored? Boredom is a terrible fate indeed. Outsourcing a number of tasks to save time and money can be a smart thing to do. A young businessperson can get a virtual assistant for a decent price and focus on what he does best, and perhaps, have more quality family time. However, some of the outsourcing tips in this book meant outsourcing your brain and accountability. The goose that lays your golden eggs may die of old age or overproduction. What do you do then?
Still, being a bit lazy isn’t just nice, it’s a survival strategy. Campers, archaeologists, soldiers, and people who watch Man vs Wild know that the more work you give yourself the more time you loose and the more calories you burn. A lot of hard work can easily lead to fatigue, heat stroke, starvation, and death. For city slickers, it could lead to a massive waste of resources and money. And so, we humans invent the pocket knife, the train, the washing machine, the iPhone, and a million more innovations to allow people to survive and thrive in the wild world.
Thus, if making things easier means giving yourself more time to vegetate or to use your mind less, then it’s bad. Putting forth a process that degrades the very machine that created the process is just mental suicide–period. If someone makes things easier to be more productive, to free herself from a bad environment, to discover new opportunities, or increase intelligent thought, then it is good. Making it easier then means living a fuller life!
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This is definitely one of the big conundrums of being involved in creating new products and services (as well as of being alive in a technological era). I wrote a post recently on a related idea – “monotasking.” http://www.portigal.com/blog/monotasking/
I just re-read The Four Hour Work week and realized how much the author detests boredom, as it is the worst fate. I’m glad I revisited this book and the other good ideas it has besides outsourcing!