Minimum Effort = Maximum Happiness??

Year after year there are new technological improvements that amaze and astound us. Only 48 years ago the first mobile phone call was made and now we can use our phones to call, text, snapchat, search the internet, and do just about everything. There are so many things we can do now that we could never do before and it truly is amazing. With each innovation not only do we have access to things we never had before, but our lives also get a lot easier. Much of the technological improvements we have seen over the past years are centered around one thing, convenience.

It is, of course, awesome to have something be convenient, easy, simple, or whatever other similar term you want to use. When we can make our lives a bit easier, why wouldn’t we? When answering this question, many will be tempted by the immediate response of agreement that, yes we would make our lives easier if we can. Today, however, I want to offer an opinion that is a bit more controversial on the surface, but on closer inspection I believe makes a lot of sense. I believe we shouldn’t always make our lives easier and that convenient solutions or technologies are sometimes detrimental to our lives and future.

Let me first say that I do not think we should return to a time of centuries ago and become a more primitive society again. I simply think society needs to temper its desire to make everything easier and more convenient in life before we end up like the society depicted in Wall-E (if anyone even remembers this movie). Just because we want things to be easier, like being able to travel somewhere faster or being able to quickly look something up, doesn’t mean we need to eliminate almost all need for decision making or effort. I could ramble on about this for pages and pages, but I think some important examples I’d like to share speak for themselves.

Above are the humans of the future as depicted by Wall-E, sedentary and unmotivated

Let's Just Get It Delivered

One simple, but useful example is the rise of delivery apps. By delivery apps I mean to include not just food delivery like DoorDash, but also GoPuff, InstaCart, Drizly, and many others like them. For a long time the only real food delivery was from a few select restaurants, often pizza or chinese restaurants, who had their own drivers. Then grocery stores began to offer delivery for a fee. Then came UberEats, Postmates, DoorDash, the list goes on and on. Then in the past couple years GoPuff, Instacart, Drizly, and many others like them began to grow their presence throughout the country. Of course the convenience offered by being able to order the one thing you desperately need for your meal off of GoPuff can be helpful or maybe you’re sick and need groceries or food delivered to you completely makes sense. The problem is people are not often using these services just for that purpose. Many have begun to rely on these services for the majority of their needs and it has caused a more sedentary lifestyle. Just the quick walk to the grocery store or restaurant a few blocks away, or even the drive there, not only gets us up and moving, but it kickstarts our body and gets us out of the groove we have worn into our seats. I’m not saying these services should never be used, but instead temper their use so as not to completely rely on them.

The Future is a Bit Scary

Moving onto a more forward looking example, I want to look at the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI). We have only scratched the surface with the possibilities of use for AI, but the possibilities are somewhat frightening in the amount of free will we could lose just for a bit of convenience. Take for example, Tinder. In 2017 the co-founder Sean Rad talked at the Startup Grind Conference about the possibility of AI transforming dating from someone swiping to the app just giving you the answer. To me, that is terrifying. Would someone really want to sacrifice the ability to choose who they like in order to put in less effort; the sad answer is yes. We have gotten used to our lives requiring less effort, especially in the dating world. Now when we want to talk to someone, we can just text them or Snapchat them whenever we want. There is no requirement to court someone by having to talk to them in person or call them to get to know them. Instead, someone can just message back and forth because they swiped on each other or someone slid into their DMs. Now I can’t say I don’t enjoy that convenience sometimes, but it takes the personal nature out of many relationships. With that personal nature already gone, imagine if AI chose for you and then even guided you in your ear during a date. Is that convenience really worth it?

No More Driving School

One more important example that I feel pretty strongly about is self-driving cars. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with these, especially if they can reduce accidents and drunk driving. That being said, there is a limit to which I think a self-driving car should go. We already have cars that help us parallel park, last-second brake for us, automatically stay in the lane, and do many other useful things. That is very helpful. It would also be great if we were tired on a long drive and a car could drive itself on a straight ahead highway for 20 minutes while we took a power nap. A car completely driving itself, however, seems to me to be just lazy. Not only is it lazy, but it takes away an important skill people should have in life. This example encapsulates what I am trying to get at with this article, we have lost many useful skills and knowledge we used to have because there is no longer a need for them.

We don’t need to stop innovating, far from it. Instead, I hope that we will all learn to not rely on the most convenient technology or app or path forward all of the time. There are times where all of these convenient things in our lives can be immensely beneficial, but they should not define our lives, what we know, or what we can do.