Beware of Convenience

I've been listening to The Joys of an Un-Optimized Life, an episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where Tim Ferriss interviews Derek Sivers. As Derek describes himself: "I’ve been a musician, circus performer, entrepreneur, and TED speaker. I’m a slow thinker, explorer, social introvert, and I love a different point of view. California native, I now live in New Zealand." This is a three-hour long conversation which goes more like a conversation between friends than an interview.

One of the topics they discuss is this three-hour podcast is tech independence. Sometimes we rely on an online service just because of convenience. It works, it simplifies things for us. We don't think long-term, and just go for the easiest solution. Unconsciously, we let convenience take precedence over other criteria. We forget that as years go by, tech companies come and go. Companies that people or businesses are dependent on may disappear, lose relevancy, or just change their business model and usage policies.

I realize that this reasoning doesn't apply only to using online services, but to a wide spectrum of situations. Beware of decisions unconscioulsy made for the sake of convenience.