Are We Getting Too Efficient at Life?

I love convenience. I would like to establish this immediately before anyone decides I am about to advocate churning butter. I enjoy having food appear at my door. I enjoy knowing where the car is on an app. I enjoy buying an airplane ticket without telephoning a human being and spelling my name six times. I enjoy asking technology questions that previously required finding a very patient expert. Progress is wonderful. I have no interest in returning to a golden age that mostly existed because nobody remembers how annoying it actually was. Still. I sometimes wonder whether we’re getting so good at removing friction from life that we’re accidentally removing some of the life along with it. Think about how many interactions have disappeared. We used to ask strangers for directions. Now the little blue dot knows. We used to call restaurants. Now we tap. We used to stand in line at banks. Nobody misses that. We used to browse shelves looking for one thing and discover another. Now an algorithm delivers exactly what we asked for. Which is efficient. But efficiency and discovery are natural enemies.

A perfectly optimized life contains very few accidents. And accidents are where many wonderful things begin. The restaurant you found because the one you wanted was full. The person you met because your flight was delayed. The strange street you wandered down because you took a wrong turn. The book beside the book you came to buy. The conversation that happened because neither of you had anything else to do. We are very good at eliminating waiting now. Waiting has terrible branding. Nobody says, “Wonderful, my train has been delayed.” But waiting creates blank space. And blank space is where your mind wanders. It is also where people sometimes talk to one another. We now fill practically every empty second with a screen. Elevator? Phone. Taxi? Phone. Waiting for your date to come back from the restroom? Phone. Two-minute pause before the movie? Apparently an emergency requiring information. I do this too. I am not writing from a monastery. But I notice it. Sometimes I make myself leave the phone alone just to see what happens. Usually nothing. Which turns out to be rather nice. Nothing is underrated.

There is also something funny happening to dating. Technology has made meeting people incredibly efficient. In theory, this should be marvelous. Once upon a time, your romantic options were approximately: person from school, person from work, person your aunt knows, or mysterious stranger who happens to appear near the produce section. Now thousands of people are available on a screen. And yet the abundance can make everyone feel strangely disposable. If this person isn’t perfect, perhaps the next one will be. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Eventually human beings begin to resemble inventory. I don’t think the technology is evil. Tools aren’t that interesting morally. We decide how to use them. But I do think romance requires something efficiency cannot provide very well: attention. You cannot optimize your way into intimacy. There is no shortcut around spending time with someone. You have to sit there. Listen. Become bored occasionally. Misunderstand each other. Repair it. Learn their stories. Repeat yourself. Laugh at the same joke again. Know how they take coffee. Recognize when they’re pretending to be fine. That takes time. Time is terribly inefficient. Which may be why it has become the ultimate luxury. Not cars. Not watches. Not private rooms. Undivided time. Imagine someone putting his phone away for an entire dinner. Scandalous. You sit across from each other for two hours and there is no invisible third party buzzing on the table demanding attention. That feels almost decadent now. Perhaps the future of luxury is simply being unreachable. I can imagine advertisements: THE WORLD’S MOST EXCLUSIVE RESORT. NO WIFI. Half the guests would panic. The other half might fall in love.

We have also made our homes extraordinarily efficient. Everything can come to us. Entertainment. Dinner. Shopping. Work. Exercise. People, in some cases. You could theoretically spend days without crossing the threshold. This would have sounded like unimaginable luxury to previous generations. And sometimes it is. There are Sundays when I am deeply grateful that civilization has arranged things so I don’t have to leave my sofa. But human beings are animals. We need novelty. Sunlight. Movement. Other faces. Weather. We need the slight inconvenience of existing in a physical world. Sometimes I think we should deliberately put friction back. Not stupid friction. I am not volunteering for a six-hour DMV experience in the name of spiritual growth. Pleasant friction. Walk to dinner instead of taking the car. Go to the store instead of ordering. Ask somebody instead of looking it up immediately. Take the scenic route. Read the physical newspaper. Sit at the bar alone for twenty minutes before your friend arrives. Let yourself be slightly bored. Do one thing without photographing it. I have also become fascinated by what artificial intelligence will do to this equation. We can already outsource an astonishing amount of thinking. Planning. Writing. Research. Scheduling. Soon many annoying tasks may disappear. Wonderful. But whenever technology gives us time, humans have an amusing habit of immediately filling the recovered time with something else. The washing machine did not create a civilization of leisurely people eating grapes. Email did not shorten the workday. The smartphone did not make us feel gloriously caught up. We simply raised expectations. Now everything can happen instantly, so everything is expected instantly.

Perhaps the challenge is not creating more efficiency. Perhaps it is deciding what the efficiency is for. If technology saves me an hour, I don’t necessarily want to use that hour answering eleven additional emails. Maybe I want to take a long lunch. Walk the dog. Call someone I love. Read. Have sex. Take a nap. All wildly inefficient activities. Maybe a good life is not the one in which every minute is productive. Maybe productivity should purchase freedom rather than consume it. This is particularly true as we get older. Time begins to look different when you’ve used enough of it. You start noticing that the point wasn’t really to complete the maximum possible number of tasks. Nobody reaches the end and says: “I wish I had cleared more notifications.” At least I hope not. So yes, make my life easier. Send the car. Deliver the dinner. Let technology organize the boring parts. I am enthusiastically in favor. But once we’ve saved the time, let’s waste a little of it beautifully. Let’s linger. Let’s wander. Let’s talk too long. Let’s take the wrong street. Let’s sit at the table after the plates have been cleared. Let’s occasionally let the evening become something we didn’t plan. Efficiency is excellent at getting you where you intended to go. But sometimes the best part of life is what happens when you don’t get there quite on schedule.