Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones
I enjoy a good ice cream cone. I don’t have a favorite flavor, it varies depending on my mood, but there’s one that’s not on my list - the self-licking kind.
This is a system, process, or activity that exists only to perpetuate and promote itself. It’s TV news anchors reporting on a gala they attended honoring TV news anchors. It’s a non-profit that raises money to raise more money without doing much for their publicized cause. It’s congressional hearing theater where everyone pontificates along party lines and nothing is fixed. It’s me trying Notion to work more efficiently, but spending all my time inefficiently tinkering with Notion.
Despite being wasteful and annoying, self-licking ice cream cones can be hard to eliminate because someone benefits from them. There are those that like getting awards for receiving the most awards and are content with their job rubber stamping forms.
What are your self-licking ice cream cones, and what are you doing about them? If you’re trying to scale up or streamline your workflow, or adopt tech to automate, are you eliminating waste and extra steps or furthering problems?