This is the Best Way to Be Ineffective

Disclaimer: This post is not about the efficacy of masks for COVID.

I was watching The Crown on Netflix and in one of the early episodes, there’s a depiction of the Great London Fog of 1952. The government was aloof as citizens suffered from thick air pollution laced with toxins. I had never heard of this real-life crisis, but thousands of Londoners died from five days of heavy fog laced with air pollution.

As the medical staff was treating patients in the Emergency room, someone asks one of the doctors what interventions they should use for the patients who were suffering.

What about masks?” they asked.

“Masks are useless! It’s just to make the government look like it’s doing something!” The Doctor exclaimed.

Estimates are that up to 12,000 people died in the 1952 Great Smog of London (Source: The Verge)

The best way to be completely ineffective…

The best way to be completely ineffective at what you’re doing is to: do something to make it look like you’re doing “something” and then be inflexible about pivoting when it’s clear that this isn’t working.

I have learned this lesson in my professional life, my personal life, and we’ve seen governments and corporations do this…