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Showing posts from July, 2018

efficiency versus flow

This diagram illustrates my frustration with contemporary life.  The square represents the most efficient way to complete an activity or task.  The circles represent the available blocks of time due to meetings, appointments, etc.  The square won't fit and so has to be divided over two time blocks.  The result is it takes twice as long to accomplish and wastes time that could've been used for something else (i.e. the white space within the circles.) In real life, this manifests mostly as having to divide my work day up due to doctors appointments, swimming with my son, etc.  And so, I start something, work on it a while, put it away, then start again the next time.  Rather than start and finish it in one block of time. I think this is a consequence of modern industrial life.  Our obsession with efficiency, causes us to schedule into ever smaller blocks of time.  But this has the unintended consequence of making meaningful work, that requires large blocks of uninterrupted ti