The Evils of Efficiency

California Bob reports:

My sister-in-law was shopping for a protective gel case for her new kindle. She got frustrated looking at eBay where there are 1,000 gel cases of varying vague descriptions, of unknown quality, ranging in price from from $3 to $5.

My reaction of course was: it's only $3, just try one.

Then I realized I go through the same thing. I dropped my car off at a garage and learned -- too late -- that their shop fee was $120 an hour -- well above other garages at $85. I spent all afternoon gashing my teeth and rending my clothing over this disastrous setback.

And in shopping generally, I get mired in the cost comparison process, often over negligible amounts.

And I noticed, in my currently evolving situation, couch surfing at the in-laws and trying to move into a strange strange house, I am hyper-sensitive to tiny details. I see trash on the street outside my house, for example, and attach all sorts of preposterous interpretations -- "this potato chip bag portends the deterioration of my property value -- I'm headed for bankruptcy."

Clearly outside of my control, clearly absurd.

Anyway it suggests to me that focusing on efficiency may be fine in a limited context where you can control things. But the world is hugely inefficient and wildly random, and you need a mental toughness, or more accurately, a pragmatic detachment to preserve your peace of mind. Pinning your satisfaction on efficiency, in an imperfect world or in a situation where you lack total control, can lead to disappointment.

So perhaps what we've been taught to dismiss as lazy apathy, is actually a necessary tool for "allocating your involvement."