{"id":12995,"date":"2021-02-22T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=12995"},"modified":"2021-03-19T02:50:10","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T10:50:10","slug":"productivity-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/22\/productivity-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"The Productivity Frontier: Can You Get More Done Without Making Sacrifices?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pareto efficiency is a concept everyone should understand. Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto<\/a><\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, the idea refers to situations where you can (or can\u2019t) improve something without trade-offs.<\/p>\n

Consider designing a car where you care about speed and safety. You have one design that\u2019s fast but dangerous, another that is slow and safe, and a third that both moves like a tortoise and has the tendency to spontaneously catch fire.<\/p>\n

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How should you compare these three designs? The third is obviously worse than the first two. Nobody wants a slow, dangerous vehicle. But between the other two is a question of values. Maybe a race car driver would prefer faster at the cost of some safety. Maybe the soccer mom wants safety over speed.<\/p>\n

This is the idea of Pareto efficiency in a nutshell. A car design would be Pareto efficient if there\u2019s no other design that allows you to get more speed or safety without getting less of the other.<\/p>\n

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Mapping Efficiency Frontiers<\/h2>\n
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