Why Modern Convenience Feels So Inconvenient

Brett McKay (0:00)

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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders, tackling their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed. Also be sure to explore our articles in artofmanliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our sub-stack newsletter at dyingbread.net, and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.

Modern life is filled with conveniences designed to make things easier. We can order dinner without leaving the couch, check ourselves out at the grocery store, communicate instantly with anyone, and stream nearly every moving song ever made. So why do we often feel busier, more stressed, and more, well, inconvenience than ever? My guest today argues that many supposed advancements don't actually save us time, money, or energy. And that even when they do, they can eliminate forms of friction that made life richer, more enjoyable, and more human. His name is Gabe Bullard, and he's the author of Against Convenience. Today on the show, Gabe and I discuss how self-checkout, mobile ordering, digital communication, streaming services, food delivery, and even smartphone cameras can paradoxically make life more annoying and less satisfying. Gabe also shares questions to ask yourself to decide which convenience is worth keeping, and why deliberately adding a little friction back into your life can sometimes make it better.

After the show is over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash convenience.

All right, Gabe Bullard, welcome to the show.

Gabe Bullard (2:48)

Thanks for having me.

Brett McKay (2:49)

So you got a new book out, Against Convenience. You're making a critique against many of the tech-driven conveniences of modern life. Why critique convenience? Aren't conveniences supposed to be good?

Gabe Bullard (3:02)

Yeah, they should be, and when they work, they are generally. So my critique comes from the fact that they're not working. I don't think that I have more time or energy than I did a few years ago, even though I've got all this tech around me. And as I was thinking about this idea, talking to other people, it really seemed to be the case that people feel busier, more stressed, like they have less money than ever, even though we have all these things that should be saving us time, energy or money.

And that's how I came to define convenience as something that saves or purports to save time, money or energy, and that purports to is key because it's one thing for a convenience just to cut out work that we don't wanna do to be kind of a quick shortcut or something. It's another for it to just sort of offload that work or to replace one chore with another. So instead of doing a task, you're now using a machine that does the task and it's taking you just as much time.

Brett McKay (3:52)

What are some examples of good conveniences? Like, okay, this thing actually saves us time, energy or money.

Gabe Bullard (3:58)

So I think it varies sort of person to person and experience to experience, but I think certain things like being able to send an email instead of writing a letter, though I do like writing paper letters and getting paper letters and everything, it is clearly much faster and much easier to send an email. There's a lot of problems with email too that come along with it, and so there's always going to be trade-offs. I think also I mention a few things in there that I use a lot. I mean, headphones, just being able to take music or podcasts on the go and listen and have that control is great, but then problems can come about if you're overusing it, if you're just mainlining podcasts that have really toxic conversations or if you're using them to drown out time that you could be spending with another person, that sort of thing. So it's all sort of a trade-off, and the problems come about either when they get overused or when they're really not providing the convenience they should provide, or sometimes if we just stack them up so much and have so many conveniences that we've sort of isolated ourselves from anything out in the world and all the other people and things that we might want to do or want to be around.