''The important thing here isn't that any one country is 'wrong''' ...yet the article concludes with a remark that "we are confident (in North America and Nort

''The important thing here isn't that any one country is 'wrong''' ...yet the article concludes with a remark that "we are confident (in North America and Northern Europe) that we have approached the optimum management of time". This amounts to a good deal of circular reasoning - this is can only be considered "efficient" if, as explained at the beginning, your goal is to fulfill as many tasks as possible. But that view dismisses the cost that such detailed planning brings with it: it doesn't consider the increased wear from stress, and doesn't account for those achievements gained by following opportunities at happenstances that couldn't be planned for. It also misses the inherent efficiency of going with the flow by following tradition and customs, where you know what will happen without the need to build a detailed analysis for each step. You can think of those costs as "externalities", goods that were lost because no one had them in mind when building the plan.