Convenience is a bad goal

When we strive for convenience, we often make things worse

Everyone likes convenience. We like it so much that many of our day-to-day decisions revolve around it. But just because something is convenient doesn't mean it's good—or even enjoyable!

Convenience can be a useful tool: when we make good things convenient (e.g. public transport), we encourage people to use them. However, modern society often enables unhealthy forms of convenience.

Abstracting cost

Convenience, and particularly technological convenience, is used to hide real costs. When you order delivery you no longer interact with the restaurant or delivery driver. When you buy on Amazon you no longer interact with a store and cashier. Businesses intentionally hide these externalities so they don't factor into your mental calculus. Abstracting away the costs involved in business and reducing everything to a monetary exchange robs individuals of agency and importance.

Consumerism

The advent of an economy where people simply continue buying more and more new things is relatively recent. We used to be able to fix products, or continue to reuse them for a long time. However, given a design trade-off between convenience and sustainability we almost universally choose convenience.

Think of every wrapper from the grocery store and every box from an online purchase. Convenience has increased both the waste of each purchase and how much we buy.

Discomfort is important

Convenience often caters to our avoidant tendencies: we use it to dodge discomfort, even when that discomfort is normal and healthy.

If you are forced to confront the reality of where your food and products come from, to interact with someone, or to see what other people are going through, that is a good thing. Avoiding discomfort is never worth avoiding the truth that comes with it.