Ideas for improving human efficiency

Things we do frequently

In this category, even marginally improving the efficiency of things we do frequently can have significant returns on time.

• Visiting the bathroom

• Ubiquitous automatic flushing, automatic sinks

• Brushing teeth

• Any time reduction would be significant

• Laundry

• Reducing frequency of needing to do laundry

• Reducing time loading and unloading

• Cooking

• Cleaning

A few of these fall into “home design” or “home maintenance”.

I’ll concede here of course that it’s not clear that it’s a good idea to make these things more efficient, as there are surely positive effects from some degree of “inefficiency”.

Cognitive Inefficiencies

This is where ideas like spaced repetition and incremental reading could have an impact.

There are likely more tools for learning that could help us absorb information better.