Volume 3 · The Corner Cabin · Essay 105
Forced Optimization Strategy
Forced Optimization Strategy is the kind of technique that looks too simple to respect and too useful to ignore.
Try it for a fortnight before judging it. Most methods die in the court of first impressions, which is the least competent court there is.
What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.
Picture the government office at four in the afternoon. The file moves only when someone owns it; until then it is everybody's business, which is to say, nobody's.
An organisation is only a group of people who have agreed, for now, to pull in roughly the same direction. That is all. A small tool, honestly kept, beats a large one admired.