The next post will probably be about opening doors more effectively, like Kramer, to save a couple of seconds off the time spent opening doors each day.
Once there was a man named Mr. Artesian and his activity was tremendous, And he grudged every minute away from his desk because the importance of his work was so stupendous;
And he had one object all sublime, Which was to save simply oodles of time.
He figured that sleeping eight hours a night meant that if he lived to be seventy-five he would have spent twenty-five years not at his desk but in bed, So he cut his slumber to six hours which meant he only lost eighteen years and nine months instead,
And he figured that taking ten minutes for breakfast and twenty minutes for luncheon and half an hour for dinner meant that he spent three years, two months and fifteen days at the table, So that by subsisting solely on bouillon cubes which he swallowed at his desk to save this entire period he was able,
And he figured that at ten minutes a day he spent a little over six months and ten days shaving, So he grew a beard, which gave him a considerable saving,
And you might think that now he might have been satisfied, but no, he wore a thoughtful frown, Because he figured that at two minutes a day he would spend thirty-eight days and a few minutes in elevators just travelling up and down,
So as a final time saving device he stepped out the window of his office, which happened to be on the fiftieth floor, And one of his partners asked "Has he vertigo?" and the other glanced out and down and said "Oh no, only about ten feet more."
The following is a vignette from a series of vignettes on improv by Billy Merritt:
[THUMP, THUMP, CRASH] The closet door explodes outward and inside the closet there is a 6 foot worm standing upright. It is green with bits of moist hair all over the body. The head of the worm has two giant eyes that always seems to be crying, and pinchers for a mouth. It makes a noise that is a cross between a hiss and a donkey bray.
Creature: What the fuck is that?!?!
MASTER: That is my worm.
Creature: Your what?
MASTER: My worm. We all have them.
Creature: I'm pretty sure I don't have a worm. I think I would know if I had something like that.
MASTER: Yours may not be as big, but you definitely have one, I can tell.
Crerature: How can you tell I have something like that? Is it inside me? Will it kill me? Jesus, get it out of me!
MASTER: EASY. Once you become an improviser, once you feel you have it down enough that you can improvise with anyone at any time. A worm develops inside you.
Creature: You mean once I finally get it, I get this, this worm inside me. I don't want that, it's disgusting.
[the worm weeps a little louder]
MASTER: The worm is all your bad habits. All the rules you break in order to make a scene work. It feeds off of your bad habits it lives off of denials and bad object work.
Creature: Well then don't you want to kill the worm. Your worm is so big.
MASTER: Thank you. You can't kill the worm, just like you can't eliminate all bad habits. Sometimes you have to break the rules in order to further the scene and go where you never thought you could. You must except your worm, you have a symbiotic relationship with it.
Creature: How do you know when you have a worm?
MASTER: You will know. It will speak to you. You will find yourself doing a scene and you will realize that what you are doing is wrong, then a little voice will say "do it, see what happens" , that is the worm.
Creature: Should I always listen to my worm?
MASTER: No, if you feed it too much it will consume you. You need to develop a relationship with your worm, know your worm, know when to let your worm out to play, and also know when to keep your worm inside.
Creature: Why is your worm so big?
MASTER: I'm a level 37 improviser, a shaft of light, My worm has grown along with me. But I still have to control it, make sure it doesn't get out of hand, or out of the closet.
Creature: What happens if you lose your worm, or if it dies.
MASTER: Then you become a improrobot, making automatic responses, and doing automatic scenes. You run a risk of losing your creativity, your life force. You lose the truth.
Creature: So I must embrace my worm.
MASTER: Yes. Would you like to touch my worm?
Creature: No.
WORM: HSSSSSSSEEEOOOORRRRRRWWWWWWW.
- http://www.improvresourcecenter.com/mb/showthread.php?s=51a2...
I don't think it's anyone's place to say what your worm is and what it isn't, only you know, but I think it's interesting to think about.
I bet we have to face hundreds if not thousands of those trivial decisions each day and most arent reoccurring all the time so you cant automate them...
When I'm getting ready in the morning, I tend to be focused on the important things. In my case, as a stay-at-home dad, the important things tend to be plans for teaching my son and helping him with his disability. I've arranged the rest of my morning to be as automatic as possible so I don't have to think about what clothes to wear or what to have for breakfast.
Incidentally, my son and I were just walking around with buckets on our heads pretending to be robots. Counting robots, not production robots :)
I watch my daughters when they go to a local candy store, and they savor making their choices. They literally have hundreds of different items to choose from.
I've got enough trivial decisions & distractions to deal with. Reducing them is becoming paramount as my schedule, and mind, and life, become ever more crammed with stretches.
I'm seriously thinking of emptying the entire closet and refilling it with matched outfits kept that way. Not going so far as the same thing every day, but there are nice sets which should be in an organized grab-and-go arrangement.
Why don't we just say what it really is - "I can't be bothered to spend time picking out what to wear".
And there's really nothing wrong with that either. Fashion is a priority for some, and for others, not at all.
What I don't get is why this choice needs to be characterized as a life hack or optimization.
Let's be realistic: getting dressed is not cognitively draining. Most of us rarely have to dress out of our comfort zone. Get yourself some "go to" outfits that are business-casual and semi-formal, so when the rare time comes when you have to "dress up" (what is that, four times a year?) you know what you're wearing. Other than that, it's jeans and t-shirts. When they all fit, you don't have to worry about what you happen to pick that day. I've never spent 15 minutes choosing what to wear in my life, and yet I've never been compelled to wear the same outfit on consecutive days.
Humanity FAIL. As if you have some very crucial things to decide on the 15 minutes you spend waking up, dressing, shaving and such...
What "context switch"? You are not an OS, and you are not even fully awake, heck you're not even awake before coffee, much less just after you woke up.
I'm a stay-at-home dad. I very often wake up thinking about how to approach my son's disability, and I'm glad that I don't have to deal with interruptions to my thought process for something as pointless as "which shirt should I wear today". I just pull the top shirt off the pile and keep thinking about my son.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some very important playing-with-blocks to do. Humanity WIN.
Sorry, but "stay at home dads" don't get to be interrupted by clothing choices anyway. It's not like the public is gonna see what you are wearing. Why even wear a shirt? Pyjamas would be equally OK. So you're not the kind of person I wrote my comment for (the same way the advice of wearing the same shirt every day would be totally worthless for a fashion model).
That said, all health to you and your son, man.
But even if I wasn't a stay-at-home dad, the same argument holds: some people are thinking about important things in the morning. Maybe you're not; maybe you walk around like a zombie until your second cup of coffee. But some people focus in the morning, and for those people, "automate unimportant decisions" is one strategy to let them stay focused on whatever important thing it is they're thinking about.
(I wasn't always a stay-at-home dad.)
Still, not the typical subject of the original post.
Outliers need not apply.
Personally I think it's a bit over the top to optimise this much but it would save more than just 10 seconds a day.
At least our girls get it :-)