Efficiency

Sometimes I'll notice a theme popping up in my life. One of the themes I've noticed recently is efficiency.

For example, I've been talking about how to exercise with my friend Mike the Mad Russian, specifically with respect to goals. I mentioned to him that I'd done 500 pushups one Saturday, and he said that it's pointless to do that, as you're just making your muscles more efficient at doing pushups. Evidently, you want to keep changing the exercises you do so that your muscles never get too efficient at doing what they do. Of course, that assumes that the goal of exercise is to burn calories, in which case you want to be doing things as inefficiently as possible. If you actually use your muscles (say if you're in the military or a professional athlete), you actually want your muscles to operate as efficiently as possible.

Another place I've seen the word used frequently is in Economics in One Lesson, which I've recently read. The word is used to describe the failings of protectionist trade policies or job creation programs. Most (if not all) government intervention in the economy leads to inefficient use of resources. Actually, the most "successful" job creation programs necessarily involve the least efficient use of resources, i.e., workers.

I've also been thinking a lot about efficiency with respect to education. It seems to me that one of the purposes of education is simply to increase the efficiency of the students' thought processes. Repetition and memorization in education serves the same purpose as the thousands of layups, free throws, fadeaway jumpers, etc., serves for the professional basketball player -- to become efficient at doing these things. (And note that I'm not saying that education should consist of nothing but repetition and memorization, any more than I would suggest that a basketball game should consist of nothing layups, free throws, and fadeaway jumpers. But they do server a purpose.)

And just to make sure this can still be considered a gun blog, I'll toss this in: And that's why I go shooting every weekend, so that I can become efficient at all of those little things that go into making a shot -- acquiring the sight picture, maintaining the sight picture, controlling my breathing, putting the minimal effort necessary into pulling the trigger, etc.