When evaluating whether to invest time in making things more efficient, I often see people compare the one off cost to make the thing more efficient to the expected future saved time when using the thing. I think there is often an important third variable to track, that often swings such decisions from not worth the effort to definitely worth the effort. Namely, the expected increase in usage of the thing due to the reduction in friction of utilizing the thing. I in practice often find the final consideration to dominate.

Recent examples from my life:

• Reducing the number of button presses needed for common workflows on my laptop means I both can navigate my laptop quicker and end up navigating more instead of procrastinating navigating because it is annoying.
• Moving to a more central location in my city has meant I both save time commuting to things and also end up going to more things.
• Automating the loading of context from my personal apps into AIs means I spend less time copy pasting context into AIs and also end up asking AIs more questions about my personal context.