Best Video Essay (new category!): In Defense of Inefficiency by Zoe Bee

We live in a world that celebrates efficiency as a great virtue, especially in our jobs but also in how we spend our free time. I’ve often felt in the past that every moment of idle dreaming or hanging around or doing nothing is “wasted time” that could’ve been spent on a chore, a hobby, a creative project, or organizing an event. Yet as Zoe Bee argues eloquently in this video essay, there are many things that are easily lost when we focus on efficiency too much. In fact, in many cases focusing on efficiency is an absurd concept (for example, how do you enjoy a piece of music more efficiently?) As a teacher, Zoe takes a lot of examples of how ‘efficiency’ can cause harm from education, but the lessons themselves are certainly applicable in a far wider context.

I can highly recommend watching the full 1h video, since all the tangents and detours are a nice illustration of how inefficiency can improve communication. But there is also a 5 minute version that is more efficient but worse in precisely the ways that the video explains. And if you can’t get enough, there are plenty of other great videos on Zoe’s channel.

As a little bonus, I also want to recommend two more books that are both celebrations of inefficiency in their own right: Momo by Michael Ende (better known for writing The Neverending Story) which is about a young girl with the superpower of being very good at listening who fights mysterious time-stealing creatures with antimemetic powers, and Nothing To Grasp by Joan Tollifson which is a non-fiction book about non-dual insight that just celebrates everything that is, exactly how it is.

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