Why Making Things Easier Is Your Biggest Mistake

I remember getting my first computer when I was 18. One of those massive beige boxes that ran on the telephone line. You were either on the internet or the phone — no doing both. The phone wouldn't even ring if you were online.

There was magic to it. Assignments that once took me hours of handwriting could be typed, edited, and perfected in less than half the time. "This," I thought, "is going to make life easier."

Twenty-six years later, I find myself sitting in my apartment at 2AM, surrounded by the blue glow of three screens, trying to remember when exactly "easier" morphed into whatever the hell this is.

We've engineered paradise and built our own prison inside it.

The Paradox of Progress

In 1865, an economist named William Stanley Jevons noticed something strange about coal consumption during the Industrial Revolution. Logic suggested that when coal-powered engines became more efficient (using less coal per task), total coal consumption would decrease.

Instead, it exploded.

Why? Because efficiency made coal cheaper, which made coal-powered everything more accessible, which created entirely new uses for coal that had never existed before. The end result? More coal burned, not less.

This wasn't just about coal.

Jevons identified a fundamental truth about human civilization: When we make something easier or cheaper, we don't just do the same things more efficiently —we change our entire relationship with it.

This isn't some dusty economic theorem. It's the exact reason you answer work emails at your kid's birthday party (aside from the fact you don’t know your priorities)

Read on.

The Digital Jevons Effect: Your Tools Now Own You

Email didn't simplify communication — it multiplied it. When sending a message required paper, envelope, stamp, and a walk to the mailbox, you damn well made sure it was worth sending. Now it takes two seconds to copy twenty people on a message reading "thoughts?" and ruin everyone's evening.

Smartphones didn't make us more connected — they made connection inescapable. The same device that lets you video chat with your grandmother also ensures your boss can reach you while you're in the bathroom at your grandmother's funeral.

Productivity apps didn't make us more productive — they turned productivity itself into unpaid labor. I have friends (named Parves) who spend more time organizing their task management system than completing actual tasks. Honestly, it's like hiring a personal assistant who demands you write all their instructions, verify their work, and bring them coffee.

Content creation tools didn't democratize media — they drowned us in mediocrity. When publishing required convincing professionals your work deserved paper and ink, the average quality was higher. Now, we're all drinking from a firehose of content, and finding something thoughtful feels like a miracle.

AI hasn't saved us time — it's created infinity-branching decision trees. Now I can write not just one mediocre article, but generate twelve slightly different mediocre articles, compare them all, cherry-pick the best parts, and still wonder if version thirteen would finally be the perfect one.

The easier something becomes, the more of it we do, until we're crushed under the weight of our own efficiency.

Your Chains Are Self-Imposed

I used to think the solution was finding better tools — better note-taking apps, task managers, and distraction blockers.

But that's like trying to cure alcoholism with better vodka.

The problem isn't the quality of the tools. The problem is that we've confused optimization for living.

Every hour spent organizing your notes is an hour not spent having experiences worth noting. Every minute optimizing your task manager is a minute not spent accomplishing anything on your list. Every moment curating your online persona is a moment not spent being a person worth following.

This is the ultimate con: We've been sold tools to help us live better, but using the tools has replaced living (Tools = any product).

The Pattern Is Everywhere

This pattern extends far beyond our digital tools:

When food became cheaper and more accessible, we didn't just eat the same meals more affordably — we created an obesity epidemic. The average American now consumes 2,500 calories daily, up from 2,000 in the 1970s.

When credit became easier to get, we didn't just make the same purchases more conveniently — we transformed into a debt-fueled society. The average American carries $104,000 in debt, much of it for things their grandparents would have saved for or lived without.

When travel became cheaper, we didn't just take the same annual vacation more affordably — we created entire lifestyles built around constant movement. The concept of "weekend getaways" or "destination weddings" would have been incomprehensible to previous generations.

When something becomes easier or cheaper, we don't simplify our lives, we complicate them in ways we never anticipated.

The Wisdom We Keep Ignoring

In Eastern philosophy, the concept of "enough" has always been central. Here's what might be a Zen saying: "When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky." Not "when you optimize everything" or "when you maximize everything" – when you recognize the perfection in what already exists.

Older generations rarely talk about efficiency, they talk about sufficiency. In India, there's a saying: "Enough rice fills the belly, more rice just spills on the floor." And who likes their rice on the floor?

But in modern life, nothing ever spills. Excess just accumulates, filling every space with more inputs, options, decisions, and notifications, all masquerading as progress.

The Reverse Jevons Strategy: Putting Friction Back Where It Belongs

After years of falling into this trap, I've discovered a counterintuitive truth: The secret to a meaningful life isn't making important things easier – it's making them harder in the right ways.

This isn't masochism. It's strategy.

When something becomes too easy, it becomes worthless both to you and to others.

The Reverse Jevons Strategy means intentionally introducing friction into the things that matter:

1. Make communication more expensive. If every message, post, and email costs you nothing, you'll create an endless stream of digital noise. What if you limited yourself to three emails a day? Suddenly each one would carry actual weight.

2. Make consumption more deliberate. When information is infinite and free, you consume mindlessly. What if you only allowed yourself three articles per day? You'd choose carefully and think deeply about each one.

3. Make creation more difficult. When publishing is frictionless, you create without consideration. What if you forced yourself to write the first draft of important ideas by hand? You'd think before writing, not during or after.

4. Make commitments more binding. When everything is instantly cancelable, nothing has weight. What if you operated like commitments were permanent? You'd make fewer, but keep them all.

This isn't about rejecting technology. It's about understanding that human value often exists in direct opposition to efficiency.

The Freedom of Constraint

Writers work from cabins without internet for days at a time — not despite the inconvenience, but because of it. (I’m at Tim Hortons as I’m writing this. The wifi sucks. Sigh)

And some are even more hardcore, like Woody Allen, who still drafts on a typewriter. Not because it's efficient (it's not), but because the inability to backspace forces him to push forward instead of endlessly tinkering.

I know a photographer who switched from digital to film. This is not because film is "better" but because the limitation of 36 exposures per roll makes each shot matter.

None of these people are Luddites. They all own smartphones and laptops. They just understand something crucial that most of us have forgotten: Freedom doesn't come from infinite options. It comes from meaningful constraints.

The One Truth Worth Remembering

The Jevons Paradox isn't just an economic curiosity — it's a warning about our relationship with progress. Every time we optimize something, we're not just changing how we do it, we're changing who we are in relation to it.

The next time something promises to make your life "easier," ask yourself:

• What relationship am I actually changing?

• How might "easier" complicate rather than simplify?

• What constraints might I need to create to protect what matters?

Because the ultimate paradox is this: We keep making things easier in the pursuit of a better life, while the best parts of life have never been about easy.

They've simply been about meaning and what matters.

Much love,

Parves