As is common in the tradition of the zettelkasten, Goutor advises "that each note-card should contain only one item of information, whether a quotation, a summary, or anything else". (p28) He ascribes this requirement to his earlier need for clarity. (cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/SfWFwENIEe2KfGMbR5n7Qg)

He indicates that while it may seem wasteful to have only one item on each card that the savings in time, efficiency in handling, classification, and retrieval will more than compensate for the small waste.

This sort of small local waste being compensated for by a larger global savings and efficiency can be seen in the design of the shipping container industry as discussed in Mark Levinson's The Box (Princeton University Press, 2008). Was this the exact sort of efficiency mentioned by Ahrens'? (Compare at https://hypothes.is/a/t4i32IXoEeyF2n9jQxu6BA)

Streamlining one's entire workflow from start to finish can unleash tremendous amounts of additional system-wide productivity. Starting out by tinkering with small things here and there is more likely to doom these smaller individual changes to failure with out associated global changes.

Once the overall system has been redesigned and reconfigured, then one can make and perfect smaller scale local changes.

Link this to the idea of kelp and sailing/rowing from The West Wing.

Dempsey, H., & Parkin, B. (2021, May 5). India’s Covid surge rocks global shipping industry. https://www.ft.com/content/cf40d764-6ab6-4638-bea6-594cc3cd5d53

The World’s Supply Chain Isn’t Ready for a Covid-19 Vaccine. (2020, July 25). Bloomberg.Com. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-25/the-supply-chain-to-save-the-world-is-unprepared-for-a-vaccine

Lee, K., Worsnop, C. Z., Grépin, K. A., & Kamradt-Scott, A. (2020). Global coordination on cross-border travel and trade measures crucial to COVID-19 response. The Lancet, 395(10237), 1593–1595. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31032-1