The Efficiency of Being Inefficient

There’s something odd about watching someone stand in front of a human being, staring at a screen to order coffee. The person behind the counter is right there. They could probably make the drink faster if you just asked. But we’ve been sold the idea that this is better, that the screen removes friction, and friction is apparently the enemy of a good Tuesday afternoon.

Silicon Valley has spent two decades teaching us that time spent doing things is time wasted. They’ve reframed errands and small talk and walking to the store as inefficiencies to be optimized away. What they don’t mention is what filled those inefficiencies. The moments of noticing weather, recognizing a neighbour, figuring out if a peach is ripe by pressing your thumb against its skin.

Someone once calculated what their homemade bread actually cost per loaf if you factored in ingredients, equipment, and hourly wages. The number was absurd. But the calculation itself missed everything that mattered. The rhythm of kneading dough, the smell filling the kitchen, the quiet pride of making something with your hands instead of adding it to a cart.

Now we’re being offered tools that will think for us, write for us, hold conversations for us while we stand there relaying instructions through smart devices. The sales pitch is always the same. This is too hard. You need help. Let us do it for you. And if you let them do it long enough, maybe eventually it will be too hard. The students who outsource their essays don’t learn to write. The person who asks their phone if fruit is ripe might forget how to trust their own hands.

What we’re losing isn’t just the skills themselves. It’s the understanding that difficulty is often the point. That the work of loving someone, of thinking through a problem, of being physically present in a room with another person, is where meaning lives. Convenience is useful until it becomes a philosophy. Then it’s just loneliness with better branding.

The solution isn’t to return to medieval peasant life or reject technology entirely. It’s murkier than that. It might just be noticing what we’re trading away and asking if the trade was ever ours to make.