We’re very mindful of minimising our use of tangible commodities—like paper, for example. So much so, that it’s a kind of obsession. It’s important to conserve scarce resources—of course, it is. We do need to live in a sustainable way.
Sometimes though…
In conserving a tangible resource, we squander an intangible one, like our time and quite often that translates into wasting other tangible commodities. If we don’t use our time well, for instance, we do more travelling for the same result, and so use more fuel.
Nearing completion of a book, I notice how much I have to push myself to print out the draft for editing because that seems like a waste of paper. But not printing it out makes the process as a whole very inefficient and distinctly sub-optimal. Nevertheless, it’s remarkably difficult to overcome the conditioning about paper to optimise the book-editing.
It’s worth reflecting…
Where might you be over-optimising something tangible at the expense of something intangible which is actually more precious to you and to everyone else?