In The Good Place’s case, that was never in the plan, and that’s pretty uncommon for a network show.
The fact that you can create a tighter series with fewer episodes is an idea that many of us already understand or should have an easy time wrapping our heads around.
What’s more interesting about Mike Schur’s comments to TV Line is that NBC was totally fine with the shift.
While it’s common to only order 13 episodes at the start of a series, usually by now the networks have bumped up the episode orders of the more popular freshman shows to 18 or even 22 episodes (shows in later seasons usually get an extended order at the start of the season).