We Ask “Does It Work?” Before We Ask “Can We Do It Better?”

This is part 1 of answering the question: How do we make decisions in the real world?

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One Takeaway

Before you fine-tune a process, make sure it actually works. Effectiveness comes first. Efficiency comes second.

What’s Rational?

In economics, the word “rational” gets thrown around a lot. But it doesn’t mean cold, calculated perfection. It simply means people act with some goal in mind, using what they have to try to get to that goal. That idea is already the foundation of human action, and we’ve covered it previously.

But what happens after we act?

That’s where effectiveness and efficiency come in.

Effectiveness Comes First

Effectiveness means your plan actually does what you hoped it would do. If you’re launching a business product, building a nonprofit, or even just trying to build a piece of furniture at home, step one is whether you did what you were trying to do.

If your actions didn’t get you where you wanted, then maybe you were chasing the wrong outcome or using the wrong tools. That’s a failure to align your means with your ends. Like it or not, it means you weren’t effective.

For example, let’s say a small restaurant, “Joe’s Cafe,” wants to increase customers. They could spend months perfecting their social media strategy. They optimize posting times and create beautiful content. Every one of their posts goes viral. There’s no wasted effort on getting customers interested. But if their food simply doesn’t taste good because they lack good recipes, all that social media work won’t matter. The first question is: do people actually enjoy eating here?

That is step one.

Then We Talk About Efficiency

Efficiency becomes important when something is already effective. That’s when we can ask, “Could we get the same job done with less?” Less time, less money, fewer headaches.

It’s a second step, not the starting point.

That’s because trying to make an ineffective plan more efficient is like getting really good at rowing a boat that has a hole in it. You might row faster, but you’re still going to sink.

Once Joe’s Cafe proves their recipes work and customers are coming back for the food, then they can focus on efficiency. That’s when they can start looking to reduce wait times, streamline the ordering process, or find ways to serve more customers with the same staff. They’re optimizing a system that already works rather than trying to perfect something that’s fundamentally flawed.

Why This Matters

In personal life, business, and policymaking, people often get this backwards. We can optimize what doesn’t work. We fine-tune broken systems. We measure performance before checking if our goals are even clear.

Rational action doesn’t mean perfect outcomes. But it does require that we evaluate whether our plans are working, and whether we’re learning from what doesn’t.

That’s where real progress happens. Not from perfection, but from a process of doing → learning → refining → repeating.

The Bottom Line

Start with a clear goal. Test whether your plan gets you there. If it does, great. Now look for ways to improve. If it doesn’t, don’t optimize. Re-evaluate. Efficiency is only worth chasing once you know if you are going in the right direction.