To those who praise efficiency as progress, who celebrate speed, optimization, and streamlining as unquestioned virtues,
I am writing about what efficiency quietly leaves behind.
Efficiency is rarely introduced as exclusion.
It arrives as an improvement.
As innovation.
As common sense.
Faster is better.
The learner is smarter.
Fewer steps mean fewer problems.
That logic is persuasive.
It feels modern.
Responsible.
Necessary.
But efficiency is never neutral.
It chooses what matters and what does not.
It decides which frictions are worth removing and which people are expected to absorb them.
Efficiency simplifies systems by narrowing who they are built for.
In theory, efficiency reduces waste.
In practice, it often redistributes it.
Time saved for some becomes time lost for others.
Convenience for one group becomes complexity for another.
This redistribution is rarely acknowledged.
It is framed as progress.
Efficient systems assume a certain kind of user.
Someone who moves quickly.
Understands instructions the first time.
Has stable access to tools, language, and resources.
Someone whose life fits neatly into the system’s design.
If you resemble this imagined user, efficiency feels liberating.
Tasks take minutes instead of hours. Processes feel intuitive.
The system seems to work.
If you do not, efficiency feels like pressure.
There is no room to hesitate.
No margin for misunderstanding.
No tolerance for irregularity.
When you fall behind, the system does not slow down.
It marks you as inefficient, too.
This is how exclusion becomes individualized.
Efficiency prioritizes outcomes over experience.
It measures success by throughput, completion rates, and turnaround times.
What cannot be easily measured is often ignored.
Confusion is not logged.
Stress is not tracked.
Quiet disengagement is invisible.
When people drop out, the system records success.
Demand reduced.
Queue cleared.
Problem solved.
Efficiency celebrates the disappearance of difficulty without asking where it went.
In bureaucracies, efficiency shows up as automation.
Forms replace conversations.
Portals replace offices.
Chatbots replace people.
Decisions are standardized to reduce variance.
These changes are often justified.
Scale demands consistency.
Budgets are limited.
Human labor is expensive.
But efficiency flattens nuance.
It assumes that fairness means sameness.
Everyone must follow the same steps, regardless of circumstance.
If you struggle, the system offers instructions, not understanding.
In workplaces, efficiency becomes performance.
Productivity metrics.
Response times.
Output targets.
Work is broken into measurable units so it can be optimized.
This rewards speed and visibility.
Those who work quickly and communicate constantly are seen as engaged.
Those who work carefully, slowly, or intermittently are questioned.
Care does not always look efficient.
Thinking does not always produce immediate output.
Efficiency compresses time until reflection feels like a delay.
In education, efficiency reshapes learning.
Curricula are standardized.
Timelines are fixed.
Progress is tracked through assessments that prioritize speed and accuracy.
Students who learn differently are labeled behind.
Those who need more time are treated as problems to be solved.
Efficiency does not ask how learning happens.
It asks how fast it can be measured.
Digital systems intensify this pattern.
Interfaces are designed to minimize clicks, reduce friction, and move users forward quickly.
This is described as good design.
But friction is not always bad.
Sometimes it is where understanding forms.
Where consent becomes meaningful.
Where questions surface.
When friction is removed indiscriminately, reflection disappears with it.
Efficient systems expect compliance without pause.
Accept.
Submit.
Continue.
The faster you move, the better the experience.
If you hesitate, you are interrupted.
Reminded.
Timed out.
Efficiency trains behavior.
It rewards adaptation and penalizes resistance.
This training is subtle.
People internalize expectations.
They rush.
They skim.
They comply without fully understanding.
Those who cannot move at this pace are excluded quietly.
Not denied outright, but filtered out through design.
Efficiency as exclusion is most visible at scale.
When systems serve millions, small design decisions have a massive impact.
A single missing option.
A language not supported.
A deadline too short.
A process that assumes uninterrupted time.
Each decision seems minor.
Together, they form a barrier.
The people most affected are often those already carrying structural burdens.
Caregivers.
People with disabilities.
Those navigating unstable housing, health, or work.
Those operating in a second language.
Efficiency rarely accounts for these realities.
It assumes availability as the default.
Those who cannot meet this assumption are labeled inefficient.
This labeling carries moral weight.
Inefficiency is framed as failure.
Laziness.
Incompetence.
Lack of discipline.
The system remains blameless.
The individual absorbs the judgment.
Efficiency also concentrates power.
Those who design systems decide what counts as waste.
They determine acceptable delays.
They define optimal behavior.
These decisions are political, even when framed as technical.
Who benefits from speed?
Who pays for it?
Who is allowed to slow down?
When efficiency becomes the highest value, care becomes expendable.
This is especially dangerous in systems that deal with vulnerability.
Healthcare.
Social services.
Immigration.
Justice.
In these contexts, efficiency can harm.
A rushed appointment misses nuance.
A shortened intake overlooks complexity.
A standardized decision ignores context.
Efficiency reduces people to cases.
Symptoms.
Files.
The cost is human.
Efficiency also reshapes accountability.
When systems are optimized for throughput, responsibility is fragmented.
Each worker handles a narrow task.
No one sees the whole.
If something goes wrong, it is attributed to process failure, not judgment.
The faster a system moves, the harder it is to stop it.
Efficiency thrives on momentum.
There is also an emotional cost.
Efficient systems demand constant readiness.
Alerts.
Notifications.
Deadlines.
Updates.
People live in a state of low-level urgency.
Always catching up.
Always responding.
This urgency is framed as productivity.
In reality, it erodes attention, care, and patience.
Those who slow down are seen as uncommitted.
Efficiency narrows the definition of contribution.
It values what can be counted.
It ignores what cannot.
Listening.
Mentoring.
Emotional labor.
Maintenance work.
These are often invisible to metrics.
The people who do this work are often undervalued.
Their contributions are seen as inefficient.
Efficiency rewards extraction, not sustainability.
Over time, systems optimized for efficiency become brittle.
They cannot absorb disruption.
They struggle with complexity.
They fail under pressure.
When something unexpected happens, there is no slack.
No redundancy.
No room to adapt.
Those failures are blamed on individuals.
The irony is that efficiency often undermines resilience.
Systems that move too fast cannot change direction easily.
They double down instead of adjusting.
Exclusion becomes entrenched.
There is a persistent belief that efficiency is inevitable.
Those systems must optimize to survive.
That slower alternatives are unrealistic.
This belief forecloses imagination.
Efficiency is a choice.
\A set of priorities.
A value judgment about what matters most.
It is possible to design systems that value clarity over speed.
Inclusion over throughput.
Understanding over volume.
These systems may look inefficient by traditional metrics.
They may take longer.
They may cost more.
But they may serve more people.
Efficiency does not need to be abandoned.
It needs to be bound.
The question is not whether systems should be efficient.
It is what they should be efficient at.
Efficient at processing applications, or efficient at meeting needs.
Efficient at reducing costs, or efficient at preventing harm.
These are different goals.
If you design systems, you have power.
Your decisions shape who gets through and who gives up.
If you manage institutions, your metrics matter.
What you measure signals what you value.
If you benefit from efficient systems, it is worth noticing how much effort they require from others.
Efficiency often hides its exclusions behind success stories.
Look how many people we served.
Look how fast we moved.
The people who could not participate are not counted.
They disappear quietly.
Efficiency that excludes is still exclusion.
It simply wears the language of progress.
If systems are judged only by how smoothly they operate, not by who they leave behind, they will continue to optimize away humanity.
Speed will replace care.
Simplicity will replace justice.
Convenience will replace responsibility.
And exclusion will be treated as collateral damage rather than a design choice.
This letter is not a rejection of efficiency.
It is a reminder that efficiency is never free.
Someone always pays for it.
The question is whether that cost is acknowledged, shared, and addressed, or quietly offloaded onto those with the least power to refuse.
A system that works quickly but works only for some is not truly efficient.
It is selective.
And selection, when unexamined, becomes exclusion.
Signed,
Someone Who Learned That Moving Faster Is Not the Same as Moving Forward