WE’RE ALL looking for an edge. To find it, we often become obsessed with efficiency—searching for ways to move faster and produce more.
But is it possible to be too efficient? What if, paradoxically, our pursuit of efficiency makes us less efficient?
That’s a not-so-crazy idea I heard recently from Edward Tenner, a distinguished scholar at the Smithsonian Institution and the author of a book called . He is not opposed to efficiency—after all, there’s nothing productive about being sloppy and disorganized. But he does offer caution to those who glorify it.
