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Over Efficient

Loved this list of over-hyped trends of 2022 with my favorite being the cult of efficiency. In many situations rush is introduced where none is needed - holiday gift-giving being a great example. We have the whole year to plan and prepare to buy gifts for those we care about. With a little bit of organization a couple of dozen gifts (which is a big number) can be bought over a year - there would be no spectacular rush to get them delivered. If storage is a problem, it could require more creativity and thinking small but meaningful. But the cult of efficiency is a contagion that spreads much further than retail therapy. If you are in the market for a product or service, the goal is always to get you to the buy button as efficiently as possible - the set of questions asked will be targeted to that goal, not relevance to your personal situation. 

A retirement planner is unlikely to ask you what kind of life you want to live going forward now that you are an empty nester - what would you be willing to give up, what can't you live without, what regrettable decisions do you have the capacity to make and so on. These are real human questions that a person may struggle to answer at first. Instead the questions are more around income and expected retirement age and some dumb risk-tolerance model that provides an answer involving purchase of a service. This is also an efficiency play. For some reason this particular example of selling efficiency came to mind as I read this article. I am sure that same zeal for efficiency drives end of life planning - just get the person processed out quickly to make room for the next one in the queue. 

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