The Etto Principle: Efficiency-Throughness Trade-Off

An original book arising from the field of risk assessment when people are under pressure. It is then difficult if not impossible to achieve the ideal of thoroughness, so efficiency is a trade-off that produces the desired effect 'with a minimum of time, expense, effort or waste.' One can see exactly how this would work when subject to targets. Sometimes people take the wrong action, while on other occasions they act too late. The author analyses the circumstances in which this trade-off is likely to occur and the stages through which a person is likely to proceed. In any given project, the time needed may be more than the time available to go through a series of stages involving evaluation, selection and execution, in other words the time available to think and do. A special case involves a trade-off between speed and accuracy, with which we are all fairly familiar, especially in a time of information overload. Although technical in background, the implications are far-reaching for the way we choose to use our time.