In Defense of Inefficiency

One of the biggest hurdles that our podcasting clients deal with is the inherent inefficiency of making great episodes. Sure, there are ways to make podcasting (or any form of media making) more efficient—ways to save time, skills to learn, all those little 'tricks' that make a difference over months or years. But a good, let alone great, podcast episode requires hundreds or thousands of decisions that can only be made in the thick of the process.

Being 'in process' can feel like going nowhere fast.

I spent the last two hours poking around the web, checking the indices of books in my office, and spinning around in my chair while I thought about what I wanted to write today. Now that I'm into this draft, I'm hopeful that I can make steady progress—but that is in no way guaranteed or even likely. This work is inefficient by any stretch of the imagination!

Update: I mostly made steady progress.

In the age of automation, doing things inefficiently and allowing oneself to be 'in process' runs counter to the advice of productivity gurus and the logic of the market. Every time I start a draft or conduct an interview, I'm confronted with the time and effort I use to produce work that will inevitably find its way to my ‘Cuts' folder. That kind of inefficiency can feel taboo if you're already overcommitted and overscheduled.

Don't get me wrong: I get frustrated with inefficient systems and redundant procedures as much as any anxious overachiever. I enjoy the process of tightening things up and finding ways to make future Tara's life a little easier. But today, I wanted to spend some time reflecting on the pitfalls of efficiency and the value of inefficiency.

I'll say at the jump that I'm not against efficiency or its partner, productivity. I'm for inefficiency. And I believe it's a critical value for work in the 21st-century economy.

What is 'efficiency?'

It's important to define terms before I go further. 'Efficiency' and its frequent partner, 'productivity,' tend to be words we use casually. We assume we know what they mean. Getting specific with their definitions allows us to examine them more closely and with fewer presumptions.

To define efficiency, we must first define productivity.

Productivity is a way to describe yield as it relates to time.

When I say I've had a 'productive day,' I mean how much I produced (yield) during the working time I had available (capacity) was at or above my expectations. Before productivity before the advent of scientific management, productivity commonly described the crop yield that a parcel of land could produce in a season or the number of goods a factory could produce in a day.

Efficiency is a way to describe productivity or effectiveness as it relates to waste.

A system is efficient when it produces the desired outcomes without expending unnecessary energy or generating unusable byproducts. To use my example from above, I might deem my writing or podcasting process efficient if all of those words that end up in my "Cuts" folder were necessary (i.e., not waste) to get to my desired outcome (i.e., a ready-to-publish essay or episode). Of course, that's not generally what's meant by 'efficient' in casual speech.

When many of us say a process is 'efficient,' we really mean that we've 'produced' nothing that is unusable or unnecessary. Nothing gets cut, reworked, or struggled over. No time or effort is spent experimenting or considering a different approach. There are no redos or second takes. We've eliminated all friction so that the gears of our work turn as quickly as possible.

I'll admit that is an extreme version of what we mean when we talk about efficiency, but I know from both my personal history and my work with others that it's an ideal many strive toward. And that ideal leaves a mark. It doesn’t lead to satisfying work, remarkable work products, or compelling experiences for consumers of that work.

With that definition of efficiency in mind, let's examine some of its pitfalls.

A Loss of Value

Productivity and efficiency—as they relate to human labor—are inventions of industrialization and management science. The more productive and efficient our labor is, the more profitable it is. I say that as a statement of fact, not a moral or ethical position.

When we increase our productivity and efficiency on behalf of an employer without seeing an increase in compensation, we begin to feel taken advantage of. While there is plenty of room to debate fair compensation policies and how they relate to profit, I think most of us have either experienced or can imagine scenarios in which the relationship between productivity and profit becomes out of whack.

What about the self-employed worker or the small business owner? If we're pushing ourselves and, ostensibly, enjoying the profit of our labor, are we at risk of exploiting ourselves in the name of productivity? Yes—in both abstract and concrete ways.

Many independent workers and small business owners fail to distinguish between wages for labor and the business's (their) profit. Whatever comes in is split between business expenses and their personal bank accounts. This can easily lead to losing track of what their time, effort, and/or skill actually costs. They become more and more efficient without noticing that their hourly wage (or equivalent) should be going up and up.

In effect, it's wage stagnation. And without the separation between wages and profit, there's no mental model for noticing or fixing the problem. There's only the internal manager urging them to do more and waste less time.

Embracing inefficiency can remind us that more goes into delivering a service or manufacturing a product than the hands-on work we can squeeze into an hour. My writing doesn't happen if I don't account for a certain amount of staring out the window or researching dead-end topics. My podcast won't happen if I don't make space for second takes or listening to fifty different music tracks before deciding on an episode's sound design.

Creating valuable work—and understanding our contribution to that work as valuable—requires waste. And often, lots of it.

A Moving Target

Efficiency is always a moving target. There's always another trick to learn, another corner to cut, or another joint to lubricate. We rarely feel satisfied—as in spent, complete—enough to declare that a process has reached maximum efficiency.

Part of that is fun, right? I'll be the first to say that I love finding new ways to improve on a process or create a great outcome with less fumbling in the dark. And that's fine, as long as I judge my effort on its purpose, vision, and outcome.

But it's easy to start substituting efficiency for effectiveness or intention. We grade the use of our time on a scale of efficiency and productivity rather than a scale of effectiveness or intention. And because we're always raising the bar on our efficiency expectations, giving ourselves a good grade is hard. Even when we're kicking butt and taking names, we can be dissatisfied if we're measuring efficiency rather than effectiveness.

Embracing inefficiency gives us more ways to experience satisfaction. If I'm not constantly pushing myself to squeeze more in, I can dip into a book, a daydream, or an experiment without worrying about whether it's taking me somewhere specific. And in that space of attention and presence, I can find satisfaction.

A Loss of Connection

Alienation is a core concept in critiques of capitalist labor relations and identity formation, and there are many ways to think about and theorize it. But the one I want to use today is this from philosopher Rahel Jaeggi: “Alienation is a relation of relationlessness."

Jaeggi's claim is that when we talk about the relationship between work and the worker or goal and the striver, we're talking about a state of disconnection. The worker is disconnected from their work; the striver is disconnected from their goal.

We tend to feel alienated from our work when external forces—management, clients, algorithms, etc.—dominate our choice of action. Instead of being intrinsically motivated or guided by skill and experience, we feel corralled into a particular way of doing things. The push for efficiency, even if it comes from our own expectations, can easily become one of those external, alienating forces.

A prime example of this is automation. Whether we're talking about the sort of mechanical automation that inspired Marx’s original theory of alienation or the algorithmic automation that we have today, automation disconnects us from whatever work we've delegated to the machine. Some of this automation is just fine—great, even! There are many tasks that I am perfectly content to have no connection to.

But when we start to view the totality of our work through the lens of automation, we can lose track of the connections that matter. Intentional inefficiency—even a refusal to automate some tasks—reconnects us with what we're creating, who we're serving, or why we're doing what we do in the first place. Intentional inefficiency isn't just for capital-c Creative tasks, either.

For instance, the software we use to edit podcasts allows us to automate removing filler words like "um" or "like." It even does a pretty good job. But we don't use that feature—even thought it would improve our efficiency. Deciding what filler words to take out and which to leave in reminds us that this is a conversation (a connection) between humans. The person or people making the episode, the person editing the episode, and the people listening to the episode. Those filler words aren't waste—they're often essential to communication.

If we were to automate that task, it would alienate us from the episode in front of us. Further, carelessly removing the ums and likes without regard for how they fit into the language of the episode could alienate listeners from the experience of the episode. Automation often has this kind of downstream effect, even when it seems harmless on the surface.

Embracing inefficiency creates friction, but that friction results from the connection to the work. It's a sign that you're doing something to counter alienation.

Flattening Expression

Finally, the drive for greater and greater efficiency often flattens the contours of our self-expression. When the software, machines, or automation rules that facilitate efficiency take on more of the task, creative decisions are made for us.

Consider TikTok or Instagram Reels. One way these tools make posting more efficient is to suggest trending audio to attach to our posts. Not only do trending audio suggestions make posting more efficient, but they also make distribution more efficient because the platforms' algorithms often amplify content that uses trending audio. Once a song or sound clip trends, its momentum can make it inescapable. Post after post sounds the same.

We can see similar patterns in political speech, advertising, book publishing, filmmaking, and music. Once something 'works,' others use it as a template to create more of what works more efficiently. We end up with derivative cultural products and political positions that entrench and reinforce dominant voices and ideas.

Embracing inefficiency allows us to take more agency in our self-expression. Culturally, we get a more diverse and complex media environment.

For, Not Against

As I said, I'm not against efficiency or productivity as values. I'm for including inefficiency as a value, too.

I'm also for all the other values connected to inefficiency: experimentation, creative risk-taking, skill acquisition, rest, play, etc. If the relentless pursuit of efficiency makes it difficult to pursue those other values, then we're robbing ourselves of the richness of experiences guided by those values.

When things feel slow, full of friction, or even wasteful, that's not a sign that we're on the wrong path; it's a sign that we're experiencing inefficiency. Instead of reflexively fighting that inefficiency, we can embrace it and see where it takes us.