This is the complete output of 2024’s studies and ideas. Enjoy.
Efficiency Is Everything is looking for a part time Website Director, responsible for legwork on articles, books, webpages. You will have a chance to research your own Life Industrial Engineering studies. Looking for an Efficiency Is Everything fan with MBA or equivalent. Email michaelkirk@efficiencyiseverything.com
Where have I been? Programming automations. It is more Economically Efficient than Industrial Engineering. I have more money now. Hopefully that can explain the Website Director posting above.
I continue to automatically think and study Life/Home efficiency. I have been trying to make 60 second meals and optimize Pleasure Per Pain. Here are the finished studies for 2024:
Pleasure Duration Per Calorie: Comparing various foods and consumption methods to get the most Pleasure per Pain of food.
7.5 Minute Per Day Bodybuilding: Complete an intermediate bodybuilding program in minutes a day, get healthy, get good-looking, make more money.
Fastest Ways To Lose Weight: Compare Fasting to Exercise, no magic here, just calories burned per day. It makes me want to fast and exercise, but not waste time on walks while eating at maintenance. Goal is to be miserable for fewer days.
Automatic Fish Tank Cleaners: Plants. I can attest to this being a 5/5 quality of life improvement if you are a fish tank owner.
ChatGPT to Save Time: Personalize diet choices, plan parties and decorations, and get quick feedback on low stakes professional questions.
60 second ‘French Toast’: I was told I’m not allowed to call this French Toast, but once you dump syrup on it, does it matter?
Thrift Store (Date Night) To Save Money on Clothes: Need clothes but don’t have the time? Have a partner that would enjoy the surprise of finding a cool piece of clothing? Want to save money? Friday Night Thrift Shopping.
Buy Nothing Facebook: For Free, my wife has cleaned and cluttered our home, gotten clothes, Halloween outfits, and more from Buy Nothing. This one is from Mrs. Efficiency, Dr. Mandy Kirk.
My biggest ask is to tell your friends about Efficiency Is Everything, or share it. Hopefully that is easier than spending money. Plus you will look super cool and smart for Min/Maxing life.
Our collection of Human Life Industrial Engineering knowledge grows.
Best Regards,
Lead Engineer
Michael Kirk
Huge Sale, $10 for our Speed Cooking book, down from $35. If the sale doesn’t show up, wait ~72 hours, I just posted the sale a moment ago.
I’m happy to say that we have lots of novel time saving ideas. Maybe that whole ‘be a master with 10 years of practice’ is real. I’ve been doing Industrial Engineering for 9 years now and I have a tool to present this release: 1 Minute Races. See below.
(Feature) Stop Trying So Hard And Save Time By Eliminating Overprocessing Waste – Do you know what overprocessing waste is? If not, you are probably wasting and not realizing it. This goes around the home and looks at areas you may be wasting time.
(Feature) Save Time With 1 Minute Races– This is new technology! This tool can be used to drastically cut the time any activity takes. Since discovering this, I look decently presentable when picking up the kids from daycare despite being WFH. (Also, this might be rediscovered technology, the closest I could find was called Single-Minute Exchange of Die)
Create Time With A Baby– A few value added tips that not only improve your life after have a baby, but also give you more time.
Eliminate Baby Waste– Tons of tips on how to apply the 7 forms of waste to getting your baby to toddler.
Faster Than Fast Food– Ideas to spend less than 5 minutes per day cooking. Featuring 2 exclusive recipes!
Cost of Exercise Per Year – Looking at various ways to get the heart rate up. I originally called this Exercise Per Dollar, but decided that a per year basis was easier to relate.
(Short)Save $200/yr on Library (audio) books– Don’t bother clicking the link, get a library card, sign up for their online services like Hoopla and Libby.
Everyone is already using chatgpt right? If you aren’t, that is an easy way to save at least 1 hour per day. I will even recommend the paid ChatGPT4. Practice using it, there might not seem to be a learning curve since its so easy, but your skill with unlock new abilities.
I’ve started thinking about a metric Pleasure/Pain. While this might be able to be measured using neurochemicals and hormones, I think we also can make some sort of personal judgement on these as well. Exchanging rubs with someone costs only time, however adding extra salt to food might even have less pain related costs. I wanted to share this idea, so you can consider this in your own life.
Think throughout the day what tasks can be turned into 1 minute races, its been eye opening how much time you can save when you remove old routines.
Wishing you the best rest of the year. Hope you make goals that help you grow in 2024.
Lead Engineer
Michael Kirk
I’m going to raise book prices. Now is the time to buy: EIE In Cooking(huh? blocked on amazon, get it free here), Perfect Eating, Speed Cooking. As an FYI, I’m in the beginning stages of a book titled “Speed Cooking in 4 Minutes Per Day: This Time The Food Tastes Good”
I have exclusive content on youtube. Some extra studies that I didn’t want to post on this website for one reason or another.
(Feature Article) Reduce Transportation Waste During Cleaning: Save 500 hours in your lifetime by learning how to use Opportunistic Cleaning and Carts. Mrs. Efficiency says this article is stellar and super value added, full of good applicable tips.
(Feature Article) In Control Bed Time: Get you or your kids to bed on time using Statistical Process Control or a good enough estimate.
Low Time/Low Effort Parties: Providing ideas to make parties easier and take less effort. I didn’t include catering, everything is still DIY.
Separate Laundry by Person or Category To Save Time: Basically just read the headline and apply it, if you want to understand why the sorting science works, I have an article.
4×6 Photos Per Dollar: Walmart probably wins for bulk photos, in-store pickup using SnapFish + CVS/Walgreens is best for small orders. You might get an exception with coupons/loss leaders.
Personal stuff:
This is super late because I was sick for 2 weeks due to me being in denial about a late onset egg allergy, then Windows and OneDrive sucks so I had to install Linux. Linux is awesome.
My Wife decided to go the Millionaire Estates route instead of Country Side Acres. (My plan for Lean FI/RE has been delayed at least for 7 years). This means I should have plenty of money for future studies. It also means that I’ll be even further pressed for time, expect more time saving studies! If you want a money saving article, reach out to me.
Remember, no pointless actions!
Best Regards,
Lead Engineer
Michael Kirk
You may be drawn immediately to the ChatGPT vs Google study, but there is some cutting edge Efficiency in the Wiping Countertops study and Kitchen Inventory Solutions. It is a cornerstone release.
FEATURE ARTICLE Wiping Countertops: With this study, I can’t imagine any further optimizations to the process. At a minimum, when wiping a counter, use the biggest rag/towel you feel comfortable with. There are a bunch more tips, but that in particular was a great finding.
ChatGPT vs Google: ChatGPT mostly won, but sometimes it didn’t. Might be worth understanding where Google is still better. If you already know this, feel free to skip this.
New Innovative Multitasking: I asked chatGPT how to multitask during the 5 seconds it takes to turn a shower knob to “On”. It gave me some interesting results for similar questions.
FEATURE ARTICLE Kitchen Inventory Solutions: I read and applied a logistics book to your kitchen groceries so you don’t have to. These are mind-bogglingly simple solutions to prevent forgetting groceries or running out of ingredients mid-week, saving you time, money, and frustration.
AI Art uses: Make art or get ideas for decorations. Some ideas for AI Art and how to get started.
It tastes alright at best, but you have all your food ready to eat in 2 minutes active time. Its incredible and the food is edible. Buy Speed Cooking: Experimental Alpha.
Coming up next time: Printed Pictures Per dollar, Parties Per Second(Efficient Parties), and if the inflation stops, some updated prices.
Move quickly on the AI/ChatGPT, I urge you not to be left behind. Its an incredible time saver.
Best Regards,
Lead Enginer
Michael Kirk
Happy Thanksgiving!
I’ve been holding out on the Spaghetti Diagram article for 7 years! It’s finally here! Find that and 1-3 minute article summaries in this special release.
(Physical book prices are going up in 2023, get yours and save!)
Know someone who has money but needs to Save Time? Get them Speed Cooking ($35), spend less 2 minutes per day actively cooking.
Know someone who has time, but needs to Save Money? Get them Perfect Eating($20), eat all your essential nutrients for $11/week (pre 2020 inflation).
Know someone who has some time and some money? Get them EIE In Cooking($10), the classic, normal recipes that have you eating for $24/week (pre 2020 inflation).
Make A Spaghetti Diagram To Save Time, it only takes 5-20 minutes and you will be able to visualize waste like never before. Plus it’s fun, you get to draw.
Save Time, Clean Less And Eliminate Overprocessing Waste, YouTube exclusive, 93 second video on using quality metrics to clean less. (94 seconds)
Save Time On Laundry By Applying Ergonomics, a few quick tips, check this out for sure if you haven’t read the laundry ergonomics article. (228 seconds)
Save Time Applying The Pareto 80/20 Rule To Your Appearance, if you think makeup/hair/getting dressed takes too long, check this one out. (88 seconds)
Water Per Second – Save 1400 Hours Getting Water, this is a heavy hitter, lots of hours saved. If you don’t already drink out of a large water bottle, this is worth viewing. (90 seconds)
Save Time By Removing The 7 Forms Of Waste, this is a great one. You can save lots of hours learning these tips. (152 seconds)
Apply Process Flow Diagrams To Save Time On Any Repetitive Task, Not as good as the actual article, but maybe a fresh perspective or two. It’s been a few years since I wrote that article. (120 seconds)
Make More Money By Using Rational Decision Making, has it been a few years since you changed jobs? This is a good reminder before making big decisions.(135 seconds)
Save Time Sleeping With Biphasic Sleep, Save 624 Hours Per Year, a summary of biphasic sleep. (208 seconds)
Speed Up Videos, Save 110+ Hours Per Year, the world famous article that got me on BBC, summarized. If you aren’t already speeding up your media, check this out. (132 seconds)
Save Money On Gas, No Apps Or Spending Extra Time Driving, easy tip that will work the rest of your lifetime. (61 seconds)
Picking The Best Health Insurance For You, Multiple times per year I explain how critical it is to pick the most efficient health insurance plan. Here it is in video form. (93 seconds)
I’m thankful for you reading these emails and telling people about Efficiency Is Everything. I wouldn’t be doing this 7 years later if it wasn’t for readers. Wish you the best.
Best Regards,
Lead Engineer
Michael Kirk
Are you spending less than 2 active minutes cooking your food per day? If so, thank you for making Speed Cooking our best seller. The popularity of Speed Cooking has been an economic indicator that I can’t avoid. I’m not sure if people like Speed Cooking in general, or want time saving studies, but this effect has been noted.
8 articles – some save time, some save money, some will improve your quality of life! (New features! Some articles have custom in-article calculators!)
Double Productive Watching TV– Is everyone around you watching a show and you feel the need to get ‘cultured’? Get cultured and knockout life’s necessities at the same time.
Double Productive Watching Kids– If the kids are playing nice by themselves, why ruin it? Instead optimize it further with some ideas for multitasking.
Productive Sickness– You will get sick in the future and you can either sulk in misery, or sulk in youtube… or a different set of productive activities.
Block Ads AND mid-video sponsors to save 30+ hours per year(5 minutes per day)- Adblock is pretty common, but with mid-video sponsors it was becoming unavoidable until… Sponsorblock! My favorite download of 2022, and its free!
Cleaning Chemistry– 8 different ways to clean. The top results of Google’s page 1 suggested mixing an Acid and a Base, which makes water and a salt. I hope this to be your go-to the next time you can’t get a stain out of a shirt, or residue off a pan.
Daycare, Stay at Home, or a Third Way– The math to decide if staying at home is really ‘break even’ and an alternative solution that has saved us tens of thousands of dollars.
Cheapest and Easiest Alcohol– This creates a negative externality, so read this at society’s peril. “Prison Hooch” is soo easy to make. 7+ alcoholic drinks per dollar.
Homemade yogurt, $1.50 per day/Perfect Eating approved– Boil milk, let cool, add a scoop of yogurt, and wait.
Alex H. suggests getting a sideways cellphone charger so you can yank your phone to unplug it with 1 hand. The Electrical Engineer in me cringes at hurting the $5 cable, but I like the idea of saving time.
I thought Chicken Shawarma performed really well for minutes of flavor per calorie because I can still taste the garlic 10 minutes later.
Are you prepared for buying health insurance this year? If you don’t plan to be sick/give birth, pick the cheapest plan. If you do, read the article. Good decisions on health insurance can save you a half million dollars in your lifetime.
Make sure you subscribe to the Youtube channel, I’m going to do 2 minute article summaries every Saturday. Efficient Efficiency!
Leaving you with some inspiration to improve your qualities- “What’s the sanest(logical) thing we can do or say? Whatever it may be, you can do or say it. Don’t pretend that anything’s stopping you.” -Marcus Aurelius
Wish you the best,
Lead Engineer
Michael Kirk
Should be something for everyone this quarter, time saving and money saving articles.
Speed Cooking ($35) – New book! More of a guidebook than a cookbook. This is how to spend less than 2 minutes per day actively cooking food. It is crazy fast, however I’ll admit the food is only as good as many premade spices or premade sauce jars you get in the grocery store. I wouldn’t make these recipes for your in-laws. If you just graduated from college and are making food for the first time, this is going to be the best book you ever bought.
Is $35 expensive for a 12,500 word book? Consider that you can save 120 hours in the first year of owning this book. Would you pay $0.30 for an extra hour of time? A separate calculation saving 40 minutes per day using the recipes 3.5 days per week, for 6 years would save you 730 hours. $0.05 per hour. That’s 125x better than hiring a US minimum wage worker.
Double Productive Friendship – As much as I enjoy my friends, my responsibilities were causing me to become a hermit. My solution was to combine necessary activities with friendship.
Save Time Watching Kids With Montessori Style Parenting – Instead of watching your kids, let them be independent in a curated environment. Its good for their development, or at least Maria Montessori and her followers believe so. I mostly agree.
6 Year of Biphasic Sleep – Back to 6 hours per night of sleep as our infant is now sleeping through the night.
Homemade Gatorade/Pedialyte Down To The Milligram – Tastes like the real stuff, works for rehydration/sports/hangovers. Using Stoichiometry, I have a formula that is more accurate than any SEO spam I found on Google.
Protein Powder Per Dollar 2022 – Inflation is here, and I was curious what the cheapest protein powder was. Check out the update with a few new brands evaluated.
We are profitable!!! For the first time in our 7 year history Revenue was greater than Expenses. Thank you to everyone who donated or bought a book, it made Efficiency Is Everything a legitimate business according to the taxman. More Efficiency Is Everything to come. See our 2022 vision here.
Leaving you with a Stoic quote from Marcus Aurelius: ‘When you are bothered by things, remind yourself “I’m giving in to pain”‘.
Wish you the best,
Lead Engineer
Michael Kirk
Efficiency Is Everything started in 2014. My wife was thrilled after applying Industrial Engineering to save time at home. She recommended I write a book about it. 7 years later we had our first profitable year! If you bought a book, gave a donation, shared an Efficiency Is Everything Article, or told your friends about Efficiency Is Everything- Thank You.
Now I would like to lay out my plan for 2022 and beyond.
If you asked me last year what the 2022 plan was, I would have told you: Spend donation money on new articles and use my promised matched money to update old articles with new prices. However with our current inflation, I’m thinking this is going to wait until 2023.
This does not mean 0 new engineering intern studies, if you donate and have an idea, send me an email. I want somewhat stable prices, and 2022 is not the year to do a site wide update on prices.
My plan for 2022 is to explore new ideas.
I want to put most of my efforts into saving time. Last year I completed a first revision of Speed Cooking, and there may be more nuances to explore to cooking food quickly. I am also interested in exploring speed cleaning and various outdoor work that could benefit from Industrial Engineering. Is it possible to speed up those DIY tasks that always take 8x longer than you would expect?
For saving money, I want to get into healthcare costs(if that is possible). I don’t have any desire to solve other money saving problems, we already live absurdly cheap, only healthcare spending gets out of control. However there may be some overlap in a quality topics. Suppose I study household cleaning products or lotions, it will be easy to save money by purchasing items that meet the quality metrics regardless of brand names.
I have that gigantic update to Nutrition per Dollar 3 sitting on the back burner. I’m waiting for my computer to die so I can buy a high powered computer to do a gigantic computation. (Or I’ll figure out a better way)
Is saving money a solved problem? Is there nothing more to explore? If so, I see this website pivoting to focus almost entirely on saving time. This is the purpose of Industrial Engineering, saving money is often a byproduct of having extra time.
When I look out to the horizon, I see an obsession to save time and eliminate household chores. Not just lifehacks that save a few minutes, but life changing ideas that will change lives for 7 billion people. Ambitious? Sure, but I really do believe that Speed Cooking has the potential to be revolutionary. What else can be revolutionary?
I’ll leave you with an Industrial Engineering style quote from The Meditations by the Philosopher King Marcus Aurelius: “No Pointless Actions”
2 new data driven articles, Facial Hair Per Second and Baby Formula Per Dollar, 2 huge money saving articles(under 400 words), and its time to buy health insurance(see the 2021 update.) Other news, the website is profitable, the website is saved, yay! Thank you donors and book buyers, expect more studies, more cost savings, and more time savings!
Facial Hair Per Second– Version 1 has a low sample size, but regardless its interesting. The results are saving me more time than I expected. You could save 200-1000 hours in your lifetime.
Baby Formula Per Dollar– Useful for anyone who is buying baby formula.
$1,000,000+ in 401k fee savings– If you know your Operating Expenses on your 401k investments. Don’t bother reading this. If you DONT know, set 3 alarms in your phone to remind you to do this. Its easy and pays about $500,000-5,000,000/hr.
2% cash back on medical bills, utilities, and daycare– Use a good credit card. Basically get a 2% cash back credit card ASAP. (no affiliates, just useful)
Its time to buy health insurance, don’t forget to pick Efficient Health Insurance(feat. new paragraph about 2021’s lessons).
Bonus Tip- Save money on Diapers by potty training ASAP.
The website needs an update, until then, the homepage has the latest articles. Protein Per Second is insane, but I’m making progress. If it becomes too complex, I’ll just make a goal of eating in under 4 minutes per day. Cleaning Science is difficult, but I have one last idea before I throw in the towel.
Here is an idea, negative fun per dollar, if you have fun and work, the value is negative. I have this idea, instead of playing Dungeons and Dragons/Video games on a Sunday night for 4 hours, do a DIY activity with your friends and rotate homes every 4 weeks. If you insist on sitting down for 4 hours, have someone youtube DJ non-fiction.
2022 is going to be great for Efficiency Is Everything, I’m going to match the donations which means thousands of dollars of new studies!
Things are good, the website only needs an additional $100 by Dec 2021 to be profitable and safe from government. Be one of the people that saved Efficiency Is Everything by buying original $10 physical cookbook(that will save you money in 7 days of use), the $20 Perfect Eating cookbook, or donate. Also someone buy Efficiency Is Everything 8GB of ram by donating, its cheap and will tremendously improve the website. This technical issue has caused me to reformat my computer in a desperate attempt to extend this 7 year old ‘gaming laptops’ lifespan, costing about 2 weeks of work. My lack of ram potentially caused memory issues in manipulating massive food data for Nutrient Per Dollar v3.
Next release should have 3x more studies, multiple studies are underway. 2 new youtube videos will be coming in the next few weeks, subscribe.
Two useful articles and misc money saving tips.
Baby Burp Statistics (Study)– Useful if you ever plan to burp a baby, or want to apply stats to your own life. We sampled over 100 burps from multiple babies. This article shows you how to get your desired probability of burps out and save time(and effort). I personally wanted 2 numbers, a 2am ‘good enough’ probability, and a pre-nap perfection probability. Using Students T test, you only need your own 3 burp samples to have personalized data.
Qualities As A Tool(Theory)– This is similar to the “Defending yourself against Marketing/corporate psychology tricks” article I released a while back. This is one of the engineering tools I did not learn in college, I learned this in the real world. This can help you make inventions, select best products, and defend yourself from marketing.
Money Saving Ideas- Buy big folding tables and folding chairs, we’ve used this for multiple parties and after 1 party saved the cost of renting. You can use RGB lights in your bedroom to give yourself and SO a tan(mostly red with a tiny bit of green or blue), this saves money on tanning and cancer costs. Changing jobs to get a pay raise can pay for whatever ‘benefits’ the previous job had($15,000/yr raise will pay for health insurance, 401k vesting, and college classes). Sewing buttons is easy, sewing/tailoring is easy, save money, help the environment, and look cool by learning these. If you want more misc tips in the form of unedited ranting, a user suggested I journal. Don’t read this until you read everything else on the website, everything else is better than this.
Last update I failed to mention I had another kid, Aurelia Kirk. I generally don’t mention me, but this matters because it means more kids to test Efficiency Baby on.
List of upcoming studies- Facial Hair Per Second, Cleaning Products, Activities Per Second(Clean Per Second), How to Hack to get free stuff, best college degrees(with soulless objectivity that you love), FILO Laundry to save time, Protein Per Second, Nutrient Per Dollar v3.
Wish you the best, don’t be weak, use logic and reason.
Best Regards,
Lead Engineer
Michael Kirk