Taking the easy way

The easy way often seems like the best way.

If you can expend less effort, experience less hardship, spend less time or overcome fewer barriers to get to where you want to go, why wouldn’t you take the easy way?

Humans have been taking the easy way for centuries.

So let’s take a look at the easy way.

The easy way to productivity

Early in my career when I was writing code as a software developer, we used to have a saying which went something like:

The best coders are lazy.

The idea was that lazy coders would find the quickest and easiest way to do something, rather than to overcomplicate it.

They didn’t want to spend the effort to create some complex solution – they just wanted to get it done quick.

The easy way to drive

It’s fair to say that humans don’t make the best drivers.

In Australia, we’re sitting at about 4.5 road deaths per 100,000 of population per year.

In the US, it’s higher, at about 14.2.

I’ve noticed recently that cutting corners is a popular pastime on the roads.

When many people turn the corner, they cut across to the other side of the road to make the turn, rather than staying on their side.

Most of the time, this doesn’t really cause a problem because the road is clear.

But occasionally, people cut the corner and then discover there is actually a car coming the other way… and they need to veer back onto their side.

I find this interesting, because the time saved by taking that corner more efficiently is negligible. We’re talking maybe seconds if you’re lucky, and probably even less than that.

But the impact of getting the corner wrong and causing an accident is likely to take much more time out of your day.

Even if nobody was injured you’d need to stop, talk to the other driver, get insurance details… you get the idea.

The easy way to travel

Technology has obviously advanced significantly over the last 100 years.

So much so that electric scooters are now screaming (silently) through our streets, many of them to the nearest train station where their owner can jump on the train to work.

This is the easy way.

Why would I drive to the train station and have to park my car, when I could bring my scooter with me on the train? It takes the same time, but it saves me fuel and parking costs and might even have some environmental benefits.

And why would I walk to the train station, when I can use my scooter and get there ten minutes faster?

The easy way to health

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed “Speedfit” centres popping up. In fact, there are about five of them in close proximity to where I live.

This company markets itself as providing “the smarter workout”.

The idea is that you wear a suit that shoots electric pulses into your muscles as you work out, to maximise muscle engagement (or something like that). This means that you are working more efficiently, so you can spend less time working out and get the same benefits.

I have a friend who went there for a free trial once. He said it seemed to work, and he was quite sore (in an exercisy way) afterwards.

It seems like a good idea. Why wouldn’t you want to work out less, and spend more time doing something else, while still getting the same benefits?

The easy way to write

Need to reply to an email, but don’t know how to respond?

Ask Copilot or ChatGPT to write it for you, and it will do a pretty good job.

Want to publish a new blog post on your company website, but can’t find the time and don’t like writing? Get Gemini to do it for you!

That’s the easy way to write.

Does the easy way have a downside?

The elephant in the post here is quite obvious.

If the easy way was so good, why would we ever do anything else?

The easy way can help us to save things: time, effort, resources.

The easy way can also cost us: our health, our time, our resources – it depends on which easy way you’re taking.

If you used to walk to the train station, but now you take the electric scooter, you’re saving time and eliminating the incidental exercise you used to receive.

When you cut the corner in the car, you’re saving time, and increasing the chance of an accident (which would cost you time, money and maybe your health).

If you use AI tools to write for you, you’re saving time and weakening your capacity to think or structure your ideas at the same time.

If you’re wearing the Speedfit electronic exercise suit, you’re saving time, and you’re potentially weakening your willpower and the ability to push yourself through your own personal pain barrier.

Time horizons and consequences

When you look at all these examples, some common themes emerge.

These themes are the time horizon and consequences.

Taking a scooter to the train station today has few downsides. But when you do this every day, you’re missing out on lots of exercise, and this can start to add up.

Cutting that corner in the car today has few downsides, until you cause an accident when you do it tomorrow.

In most cases, the short term issues are minimal. It’s only when we consider the longer term that the consequences emerge.

And the long term is where it’s so difficult for humans to focus. It’s hard to imagine the future when the present is right here, right now, staring you in the face.

You don’t want to be late for that meeting, so let’s speed up a little and cut that corner. The potential future of yourself lying in a hospital bed doesn’t naturally come to mind.

The easy way to work

I think humans know this about themselves.

They know that people have a tendency to take the easy way.

Can you imagine what would happen in an organisation where everyone took the easy way?

The easy way would soon become the hard way when things started to go wrong.

Enter governance.

No, you can’t just say you want to commence this $5 million project without some sort of approval.

No, you can’t go and buy that $50,000 piece of equipment without my signoff.

No, you can’t work whenever you want – our business hours are 9am to 5pm and you need to be here.

We know that we can’t let people run around doing whatever they want, so we govern them.

The need for self-governance

Organisations have governance, because the consequences for failure are clearer.

If your company builds bridges, you’d better be sure that bridge is built so it doesn’t collapse. The consequence is obvious if things go wrong.

But who governs us, as individuals, in our own lives?

It turns out that if nobody is there to govern us, we need to govern ourselves.

What helps us to avoid the easy way?

You might have noticed that there are people who don’t take the easy way.

There are athletes that train hard for years, and that’s not the easy way. The easy way would be to get a regular job.

Some people spend years writing before they publish a book, because the act of writing helps them to become better writers. That’s not the easy way. The easy way would be to not write at all.

Some people don’t cut corners while they’re driving, because they did it once and had an accident. They no longer take the easy way either.

Others used to take the easy way, never doing any exercise. Then they saw an overweight relative have a heart attack. They saw how the easy way became the hard way. And now they walk every day before work.

When our behaviour changes

It seems to me that we tend to avoid the easy way in two situations:

When the strength of our aspirations makes it feel as if the hard work is not so difficult – and that it’s simply the work that is needed to be who we want to be.

Or, because we clearly see that the potential consequences of taking the easy way are impossible to ignore.

If you want to avoid the easy way, what needs to change?