“A decade ago, the American psychologist Adam Grant and I argued in a journal paper that this ‘too much of a good thing’ phenomenon might be a general rule. Some motivation produces excellent performance; too much motivation produces choking. Some group collaboration produces cohesion and enhances productivity; too much of it leads to staleness. Some empathy enables you to understand what another person is going through; too much could prevent you from saying and doing hard things. Similarly, in my book The Paradox of Choice (2004), I argued that, whereas a life with no freedom to choose is not worth living, a life with too much choice leads to paralysis, bad decisions and dissatisfaction. Finding the right amount – what Aristotle called the ‘mean’ – of motivation, collaboration, empathy, choice and many other aspects of life, including efficiency, is a key challenge we face, both as individuals and as a society.”
Why efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better | Psyche Ideas
Read more on what I think about Efficiency
Efficiency vs human agency
“As the British economists John Kay and Mervyn King point out in their book Radical Uncertainty (2020), efforts to quantify risk by attaching probabilities to various unlikely future states of the world are mostly science fiction. The world is much messier than a roulette wheel or a pair of dice” (now this is some comment to chew on…. for a futurist:::) READ MORE HERE
