Your point was thought provoking. In problem solving the "what" and the "how" are orthogonal since the method doesn't dictate the goal. However, if it takes a long time to do something (how: working slowly eg. because you're coding on a very slow, old machine) it tends to predict that there's less accomplished (what). That suggests that this isn't 'fully' orthogonal.

Someone else raised a good point that if we're working on the wrong thing, it doesn't matter how fast we are. However, I think a more subtle interpretation is more helpful here. I think that we need to be clearer about the consequences of the outcomes: what's the value add. The way I often reason about that is whether the outcome is 'Long-term greedy' or whether the outcome is going to make us a million dollars now. I find the latter really helpful, because if we're going to make a million dollars now but it costs us 100K in tech debt, then (provided there's not a better use of the resources) that is likely a good cost-benefit outcome.