City planners know that you can’t solve traffic problems by building more roads. We could apply this line of thinking in our personal lives, too. I’ve written about small battery productivity before, and the more I think about the pattern, there more missed opportunities I see.
One day I thought that my smartphone’s small screen makes it too uncomfortable to read text. An obvious good solution is to get a larger smartphone, which is what I did. Now I’m convinced that was the wrong good solution. The right one would be to realize that no handheld device is appropriate for reading in the first place. Increasing the screen size allowed me to read more with less discomfort, but it’s still a bad way to read. I have optimized a bad solution, prolonged its lifespan.
It’s like getting a bigger fork to eat soup. The correct solution is to ditch the fork and get a spoon.
So I downsized to an even smaller smartphone than before. I’ve optimized to not read at all, nor watch videos or do any other work. It’s uncomfortable to the point where I don’t see the point of struggling and just walk to my computer or wait until I get to one.
Finally, I can taste the soup again.