Using ChatGPT4 to Save Time
Some ideas on how to utilize AI to save time.
As a note, this is only tested on ChatGPT4. One time ChatGPT4 was down and I ended up going to Google’s Gemini to do the work, it was alright.
Food
Want to start eating healthy or a specific diet, but not sure what to buy? Ask
I am *insert Keto/Vegetarian/Gluten Free/Low FODMAP*, what can I buy at *insert restaurant*
I am *insert Keto/Vegetarian/Gluten Free/Low FODMAP*, what should I buy at the grocery store this week?
I am *insert Keto/Vegetarian/Gluten Free/Low FODMAP*, what snacks that don’t require refrigeration can I buy?
Ask ChatGPT how to modify a recipe according to whatever you want. I will warn you, this is probably best for seasoned cooks because it can occasionally give bad advice like add way too much soy sauce (or at least that seems far too much to me).
It wins far more than it loses.
Ask it for recipes (No endless scrolling of cooking spam articles!). Include dietary restrictions. Tell it to add extra vegetables. Ask what to do if you are out of an ingredient. Replace expensive/seasonal ingredients.
Party Planning
In moments I can ask:
Give 10 different cuisines I can *insert cook/cater* from and give 3 possible examples of what specific foods and quantities will be needed for *insert number of kids and number of adults*.
It gives a bunch of ideas, no brainstorming time needed.
Then ask:
I want the theme to be *insert theme*, what are 20 extremely easy, fast, and simple ways to decorate?
Finally, whenever a crisis happens, ask ChatGPT for advice, there might be a simple solution.
Watching/Answering Children’s Questions
My kids ask a lot of questions, and since ChatGPT can understand phonetically spelled words, my 4 year old can ask ChatGPT questions. It’s similar to a Google/Siri thing, but there’s a higher level of detail in output. I specifically have a bot that tells ChatGPT that they will be talking to a 4-year-old who spells things phonetically and that the answers should have simple words.
Law Questions
While this isn’t for high stakes things, I feel comfortable asking ChatGPT about low stakes legal questions. I’ll often read some document and not understand a sentence. I could just ignore the problem and sign anyway. I could pay a lawyer $100-$200 to read it. I could ask ChatGPT and confirm my understanding with further reading. The nice part is that ChatGPT is awake at 4am when I am working, my lawyer isn’t awake until 8am and my $100 question is small fries to them.
Medical Corruption
Avoid unnecessary medical procedures, ask ChatGPT before you are billed and waste time on unnecessary treatment. As an example, I had a stomach bug and the nurse was pretty pushy about an x-ray. I told ChatGPT about my symptoms and it thought the x-ray was unnecessary. An anti-biotic later, I feel great. No x-ray needed. (I then listened to this nurse go down the room and ask everyone if they wanted x-rays for any condition imaginable).
Car Repair
Confirm that what your mechanic is saying is true. Ask ChatGPT to confirm everything from diagnosis, pricing, etc…
Bots
You could turn all of these questions into ‘Bots’. Bots are literally copypasting your question/prompt/command before you send your new question. You could do this manually by… copypasting your question/prompt/command before sending your question. For instance:
Always copypaste this:
“You are a master chef and come up with ultra healthy recipes that are filling, high in protein, high in nutrients, and easy to cook. Come up with simple recipes I can make up at home”.
Then type whatever you want after before hitting send.
“I want 3 meals that only require a few ingredients from the grocery store”
Then you get a customized answer.
The ‘bot’ thing, is saving the pre-prompt in the ChatGPT4 system… Yeah, they copypaste for you. Its actually kind of nice 🙂
Final thoughts and tips
I often reply to AI with: “That was a 2/10 answer, give me a 10/10 answer” or “Be realistic, not idealistic”. These really do work, the technical term is called Chain of Thought.
Application is up to you. You will get better at asking AI questions.
7.5 Minute Per Day Bodybuilding Workout (And make more money)
Due to miscommunication, one of our Efficiency Is Everything creators thought I was doing a 5 Minute Per Day workout. When I corrected her, she mentioned: “A 5 minute per day workout would be really cool”. (Note from the Editor: I personally would want to warm up and cool down, but the purpose of this article is efficiency. Add a warm-up/cooldown and you can still get in a quicker strength workout).
I couldn’t get it down to 5 minutes, at least not with enough warmups. You might do better.
As a note, given the countless studies suggesting good looks = more confidence = more money, I will propose that exercise is profitable.
Goals
The goals are to be healthy, save time, get stronger, look good, and make more money.
On Being Healthy
Don’t get injured, the weights are heavy and typically done to failure. Two suggestions: Be conscious of form by ensuring the targeted muscles are getting hit rather than joints or unwanted muscles. Stop when you feel pain. (You already got stronger this week, come back next week)
On Saving Time
Be deliberate. If your goal is to get in your workout and save time, look at the biggest sources of waste. A 20 minute drive to the gym would justify doing 2 of the lifts in a single session. How long does it take to get dressed/ready for the gym? Can you do warmups more efficiently?
On Getting Stronger
Each week the goal is to move up in weight, or do more reps. You will get stronger if you do this. To ensure this happens, record your weights somehow. I use either pen and paper or Google Sheets on my phone.
On Looking Good/Make More Money
Muscle looks good. Combine this with eating right, higher protein diets, potentially alternating between bulking(excess calories) and cutting/losing weight.
Good looks will help you do better in interviews, performance reviews, and general conversations with everyone you encounter.
The Workout
The classically recommended Bench, Deadlift, Overhead Press, Squat. 1 per day, 1 heavy set, 4 times total per week. Each lift is done on a separate day, the advantage here is that you rest during your day, rather than between sets at the gym. This isnt significant and if you want to stack Bench and Deadlift on the same day, and Squat and Overhead Press another day to avoid traveling to the gym, it could be more efficient. With a home gym, the rest time is greater than the time it takes to travel to my weight set.
Lifts
I recommended the classic 4, but feel free to add and subtract as you see fit. The process/system is important. Although there is a reason these 4 are classic, they are good. For vanity reasons, I added bicep curls as an additional day.
Reps, Sets, Weights
Whatever you do, you want to keep close to 0 strength left in you. This means you will *always* need a spotter for bench; you cannot do this program without a spotter on bench, because you will be failing.
Sets: the less warmups the faster, the more warmups, the better your performance. You warm up to 1 final set, it’s the heaviest and you will do enough reps to fail or be close to failing.
For bodybuilding, I like eccentric/negative training. Where you do ~8 reps, but you count for 6 seconds doing negatives.
For strength, I like warming up to a single heavy set aiming for 2-5 reps.
Real Life Notes
The first time you do the routine, you may or may not get under 7.5 minutes. Maybe it’s due to having to create a brand new Weight/Reps sheet, or not finding the clips.
You will want to work fast, everything should be more upbeat than normal.
Find ways to reduce transportation time. Driving to the gym is never going to hit 5 minutes/day. This is nearly exclusive to the home gym crew. However, you can see there may be applications of a quick workout in a gym setting. Given the friends and connections I made at the gym, I frequently consider getting a membership for social rather than health reasons.
Efficiency Kandice insists on this: Disclaimer: Efficiency is Everything is not a physician or healthcare provider. This article is for general information purposes only. Follow this exercise regimen at your own risk.
Save Time With Fish Tanks
Our Efficiency Assistant had some ideas for saving time caring for fish tanks. When she mentioned plants, I personally could attest to how much time this saved.
Efficiency Abigail:
There’s something magical about watching colorful fish glide through the water, however I knew I didn’t want my tank to become an overwhelming time suck. I researched and researched, discovering a few tricks to save time, money, and stress.
Here are my top three tips for creating a thriving, low-maintenance tank.
Choose the Right Tank Setup
A well-prepared tank makes everything easier. I started with a 10-gallon tank – it’s big enough to create a stable environment without being overwhelming to care for. I cycled my tank for almost three (3) months, prior to adding any aquatic life. This helped my tank to build up beneficial bacteria that will keep the water healthy. For filtration, I swear by sponge filters. They’re budget-friendly, easy to clean in between your water cycles and a deep clean of your filtration system.
Focus on a Self-Cleaning Ecosystem
What really saves me time is focusing on a natural setup. Live plants like Anubias and Java Fern have been game-changers for my tank. They improve water quality by absorbing toxins and reducing algae, which means fewer water changes for me. Combining these plants with natural cleaners like algae-eating fish and scavengers creates a balanced ecosystem.
Efficiency Michael Kirk: We have also added plants to our tank, we got some from friends who said their plants had grown too much.
Pick Hardy Species
My tetras, grouped as an all-female “Cheerleader Squad,” thrive as social creatures. African dwarf frogs delight me with their antics, while a Rubber Lip Plecostomus and my Nerite Snail handles cleaning the glass. There are two Albino Cory Catfish which love sifting through the gravel and sand for leftover food.
Easy on the budget and relaxing
Fishkeeping has become a relaxing, budget-friendly hobby for me. With the right setup, hardy species, and natural cleaning methods, my tank practically cares for itself.
60 second “French Toast”
It seemed my friend and the social media world was appalled, but they didn’t taste it.
Imagine doing the following first thing in the morning, upbeat and as quick as possible.
Or whenever.
The Process
Get a plate, a bowl and a fork, Eggs, Bread, Cinnamon, and nonstick spray. You should do this along the path of your kitchen in the most efficient way possible.
Crack 1 (or more) eggs into the bowl and whisk
Spray plate with nonstick spray
Dip both sides of bread in the egg. Place on plate. Repeat for all bread.
Shake cinnamon over top, put in microwave long enough for the egg to cook. Probably 75 seconds for 1 slice, 2 minutes for 4 slices. I don’t mind overcooking.
Go do something else while waiting
You have about 2 minutes of microwave time.
Grab the syrup, clean up, answer text messages.
Enjoy
Coat in syrup and eat. It might not be the exact texture you expected, but I am sure it tastes great.
What other corners can be cut in favorite recipes to have them prepared in 1 minute? Hard problem, but I’ve seen it work.
Weight Loss Per Day – Fasting, Exercise, and more compared
I don’t think anyone will be surprised to see “Not Eating” + “Doing Exercise” is the fastest way to lose weight. However the noteworthy comparison is the Efficiency of weight loss. This can be used to limit the pain needed to lose weight.
There are plenty of websites about fasting for multiple days, look into those or the Electrolyte loss + Refeeding Syndrome can kill you.
Data and Findings
Fasting with exercise wins, this is easier said than done if you’ve fasted for a few days. I’ve been able to run ~1 mile and walk 2-3 miles during a 5 day fast. This is approx 300+ calories.
Something interesting here. The extra exercise is gives you the same weight loss per day as if you never fasted, however the absolute when fasting is higher. Its easy to dismiss this as obvious, but if you ever found yourself buying an extra item because it was Buy One Get One Half Off and you ended up spending 50% more money than you expected. My point being: If you are going to be suffering during a fasting day anyway or its urgent to lose weight, you could add an extra 300+ calories in exercise.
This also highlights how insignificant some exercise is. 1 hour of causal walking burns ~300 calories max. It is quite time intensive to burn calories this way. Meanwhile if you could run 6 or 13 miles, you could be burning 800 or 1700 calories in a day. These stacked with a caloric deficit can get decently high in weight loss per day.
Personal Application
If you can handle fasting, it clearly shows to be the best. I will do this a few times a year for ~2-3 days to lose weight but not get into ketosis. Being obsessed with Efficiency, I admittedly will do sometimes a 1 mile run then take the kids ~2 miles round trip to the park.
More regularly, I’ll eat 1 large-ish meal and 0-1 smaller meal/snacks through the day. Then I’ll do some cardio, often 6 miles. 1500 calories eaten, ~800 calories burned. 1800 Caloric deficit! Lose a half pound in 1 day!
This is semi-reasonable to do this and similar all week. Swapping 6 mile runs for biking to let muscles rest won’t burn as many calories, but it will give you a break and still burn extra.
Final Thoughts and Long Term
I consider losing weight a temporary condition. I don’t plan to live like this forever. I plan to lose the weight and stay some-what around that weight.
If I gain 5-15lbs in a year, I can lose this weight in weeks. This can beat some of the mental difficulties with weight loss. We are often inspired for the first ~2 months of a new lifestyle before the excitement is gone.
Apply this law of nature and sprint at weight loss for 2 months before taking a break and eating normal. When you are excited to take on another round of weight loss, you are ready to begin.
Save Money with Fast Recipes as an alternative to Fast Food / Restaurants
Given the ~$15 per person minimum cost to eat somewhere, I wanted to share the concept behind our 2 minute/day Speed Cooking book.
Concept: Faster than Fast Food
Fast food takes some transportation time, order time, waiting, and further transportation time. A re-order delivery is going to beat us, but we can beat a trip to a Fast Food Restaurant ~5 minutes.
We will only count active time as most Fast Recipes take 20+ minutes to cook. You are at home during this 20 minutes of passive time, I can’t think of a better location to use those 20 minutes. Grocery shopping is also not counted in the total time, if you need to bring this time down, I suggest a 4 week schedule of recipes, pick the week you like and it has all groceries needed for the week sorted by isle(See EIE 21$/week).
How To: Faster Than 1000 Calories/Minute.
Everything is throw and go. Meats, potatoes, vegetables, nothing is ever cut into smaller pieces. If you want a vegetable cut, you will need to pay the grocery store premium(We do this for baby carrots).
Nothing is measured. Spices are added fast. Do not pick recipes or spices where slightly too much or too little will ruin it. Fewer spices is faster, however, a motivated chef can put in a dozen spices in far less than a minute.
Typically store bought sauces are used to save time, but taste and cost varies greatly. We personally have 1 exception, and that is to make a ultra massive pot of red Italian sauce. The job is quite easy, open cans of tomato sauce, add herbs, salt, sugar, some baking soda(Life Pro Tip), maybe ground beef. Let it cook and stir every ~30 minutes until it gets to boil. After it boils, turn it off, let it cool, and freeze into ~40 containers.
The big deal: Passive cooking only. Slow cookers, ovens, rice cookers, air fryers, maybe a pot of water if the pot is tall enough that water wont boil over. Nothing can be flipped or touched. Remember that its Throw and Go.
Ideas and Examples
Here are two examples, one from Speed Cooking and another from an upcoming ‘This Time The Food Tastes Good’. Note how many servings these make. Leftovers are the goal to save you time.
Two Minute Broccoli/Chicken Sesame Rice
This is my wife’s favorite. Basically pick out some sauces from the Asian isle at the grocery store. If the sauce is the name of a dish you like, its a safe bet to try it. This is a summary from the book Speed Cooking.
Steps:
- In a rice cooker, add rice and water. Turn on the rice cooker.
- Put chicken or broccoli on a pan and place it in the oven. Turn the oven on to 325°F (163°C) for 45 minutes.
- On a plate, place the cooked rice, and your choice of either broccoli or chicken. Add your preferred sauce at the table.
You may have a gigantic chicken breast on your plate. Time to enjoy conversation with family or TV while you cut the chicken breast into manageable pieces. The goal is to save you time in the kitchen, and give you more time you actually enjoy.
5 Minute Biryani
This one was so good, my surprised Dad chased people around the house telling them to eat it.
Servings: 3300 Calories, ~6 servings
You have 2 minutes to put these ingredients in a slow cooker, if you can’t find a spice quickly, move on, it will taste fine. You also might want to double the spices if you prefer extra aroma. We do not.
In a slowcooker add:
- Chicken (or Potatoes) – 2-3 breasts, and any chicken scraps you’ve been saving.
- Water – ~1 cup, ensuring the slow cooker does not dry out. Excess water is beneficial as it mixes with the rice later.
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 2 tsp cumin
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 2-3 tbsp sugar, depending on your desired sweetness
In a rice cooker:
- 4 cups basmati rice – It’s quite important to use this type of rice for the intended flavor. Other types of rice can be used, but the taste experience may vary.
- 6 cardamom pods
- 1 star anise
- 10 cloves
- 2 tsp salt
Final steps moments before serving in the slow cooker:
- (deliciously optional) 8 tbsp ghee/butter/veg oil/veg shortening/peanut oil
- Cooked basmati rice, you can optionally take the cardamon pods, star of anise, and cloves out. Or just avoid eating it later. To save time, you can basically skim the top layer of rice, depends on how much waste you are okay with.
Now stir everything really good, you have less than 1 minute left. Serve and Enjoy.
By the way I never seem to get the salt right, I always salt a second time at the table.
Math:
8 cups cooked rice * 200 calories/cup = 1600 calories
3 chicken breasts * 250 calories = 750 calories
8 tbsp oils * 120 = 960 calories
Enjoy The Freedom
Save money, save time. These low effort meals are my personal favorite. Get excited about a future speed cooking style book, we figured out how to make Chicken Pot Pie in under 5 minutes of active time. For now, our even faster, but not as tasty Speed Cooking book.
Save Time with 1 minute races- Can you finish your task time?
There does not seem to be a direct Industrial Engineering principle or tool here, but I’d like to propose a new tool: The 1 minute race.
The concept being, take a job that takes a somewhat short amount of time, like ~5 minutes, and see what that job looks like complete after a 1 minute sprint.
This may cause you to find innovations out of necessity. Sometimes you do silly things that fail, other times you do ridiculous things that save you so much time you change your routine forever.
The Goal- Don’t lose the spirit by sticking to the letter
The goal here is to save time by finding innovation, tracking task time, and motivating yourself to work quickly(scientifically works).
When doing my own, I found myself taking 1 minute and 39 seconds to do a daily task I previously thought took about 5 minutes. This is a huge win, 3 minutes saved over the next 50 years is 912 hours saved(or visualized as 112 days working!). This was on the first try, and even if I was unable to further refine the process, I should be happy about the lessons I learned and the ~1000 lifetime hours saved.
You can also cut the time down further, we have a goal of getting the kids in each car seat in 30s. When that got too easy 10s.
Ideas
I apologize about the tone below, constantly asking the question. It just felt like if I wasnt direct, it wouldn’t be clear.
Morning Routine
Can you shower in 1 minute? Or at least do things like wash hair/shave/soap each in 1 minute?
Can you style your hair in 1 minute?
Can you do each makeup product in 1 minute? Or your entire makeup process?
Can you pick out your clothes in 1 minute?
Kitchen
Can you get all kitchen ingredients needed out? (This one isnt as good, because if you make a mistake you lost some time, however depending on the time savings, you might be better off going for a second trip)
Can you load (or unload) the bottom rack of the dishwasher in 1 minute? The top rack?
Can you start the rice/noodles/slowcooker recipe/passive cooking in 1 minute?
Can you add all the herbs and spices in 1 minute?(This is best for recipes where spice quantities do not need to be exact, indian and mexican food are great for this)
Laundry
Can you start the laundry in 1 minute? Including transportation time, you may need to literally run.
Move the laundry to the dryer in 1 minute. If that isnt hard enough, include the time it takes to transport yourself to the dryer.
Kids
With these, there is definitely less freedom for the kid. An uncooperative kid will have their body contorted as the parents need.
Can you get each kid dressed in 1 minute?
Can you get each belted in the car, from living room to car in 1 minute?
Cleaning
Can you clean your floor for vacuuming in under 1 minute?
Can you wipe the surface in under 1 minute? Can you get it spotless?
Pets
Can you feed/water your pet in 1 minute? How about all of the pets?
Home improvement/fixes
Can you find a solution to the problem you’ve been procrastinating on for months in 1 minute? If you already know the solution, can you find the exact first steps in 1 minute? Got that too? What about the first minute of the job? Maybe the problem was all mental. (Although, when I use this trick, I usually require myself to work on the task for 10 minute before evaluating how much it sucks. After 10 minutes, I usually think the task isn’t so bad.)
Single-minute exchange of die(SMED) Applied to life
The closest principle I found to this was called SMED. They break up this even into two types: Internal Tasks and External Tasks. Internal Tasks are those during the 1 minute when you are live working on something. Its suggested to reduce the time of internal tasks, to move as much as possible to external tasks. External tasks cover everything else. As an example, if you were trying to get your clothes on in under 1 minute, try to envision ahead of time what outfit you are going to wear so you don’t need to think about it during that 1 minute.
Only other generic tip is to remind you to use the right tools/tech and have your process/tool locations/material locations standardized.
Continuous Improvement
According to the textbook, once you have a good process, you have two possible futures: degradation or improvement. Thus the concept of continuous improvement.
However, today I’ll give an alternative take: Its probably impossible to continuously improve every 1 minute process you’ve ever done. Even if you did, you are quickly going to run into diminishing returns/pareto principle. It was easy to shave 3 minutes, its hard to shave another 20 seconds.
My advice here, go for continuous improvement, but don’t let it take energy that could be devoted to better causes. I have my 1 minute hair routine down, it would be nice to get even faster, but I’m not going to hyper analyze my 1 minute hair routine. Its already good.
Stop trying so hard and save time – Overprocessing Waste
I dedicate this article to my wife, who seems to make the fanciest desserts on Tuesday mornings at 6am, just so we can have some and maybe give some to the in-laws. The in-laws are dieting btw, their frontal lobe(thinking) doesnt want desserts, even if the hypothalamus wants it. If we just wanted to appease the hypothalamus, why not get any store bought or simple to make treat?
Overprocessing – Doing less to save more time
If you aren’t leaving home(or recording yourself), would you spend time to fix up your appearance? No, that is Overprocessing waste. You have no hair requirements, yet you are meeting a specification required when people see you.
Are you Overprocessing?
Kitchen
Meal quality. The following take time, and its debatable if they taste better than their disassembled counterparts that can be made quicker and in bulk: Perogis/Ravolli/dumplings/samosas/empanadas, homemmade noodes/gnocchi, Sushi, stuffed peppers.
Cutting food: Its easier and faster to cut an onion 5×5 into cubes than 20×20 diced. This one depends on the recipe, but the general idea is that if you can get away with doing 7 cuts instead of 8 cuts, save the time.
Slow or Traditional favorites require modern solutions: When making things like Perogis/Ravolli/dumplings/samosas/empanadas, everyone has their own rules you must abide by. I ignore this in favor of the fastest way to seal this food, which is usually my fingers, fork, or tool. No egg wash, no fancy twist. When doing slow recipes, consider what is actually important: Is it the ancient process? Or the flavors and textures of the food?
A dessert is going to taste great, why try hard: Sugar and fat tastes good, I can relent on special events and holidays. If there was some expectation(a Wedding) for fancy desserts and you are going to DIY it(save money), it should be relatively high quality(spend time). Or if you were going to spend time with family/friends making fancy Christmas cookies one time per year, its a special, pleasurable, occasion rather than something you are trying to save time on.
Bulk food prepping unrelated foods: Sometimes I’ll see videos of someone doing a ‘Sunday Meal Prep’ making like 3 entirely different meals, packing them in neat little containers, and asking me to subscribe. At home, I’ll typically just make regular dinner, but 2-3x the size the family eats. We were going to cook dinner anyway, so we get time savings from only taking out ingredients once and only cleaning up once. You still must spend extra time comes from processing the extra material by cutting and cooking. If you do insist on a ‘Sunday Meal Prep’, consider the time savings are in reducing the taking out and cleaning up, every extra pan dirtied and every extra trip to the cupboard/refrigerator is your lost savings.
The best breakfast? Does it need waffles
I once read a line “>2018 >Still eating for taste”, and it was profound. Not everything you eat needs to taste good, it can taste okay, it can taste bland. During the ~50% of meals I eat at a TV, I’m more invested in the content than the flavor of food. This can also be used for nutritious purposes, instead of adding extra fats and sugars, I’ll eat something healthier and just pick out a great video.
Laundry
Is Folding/hanging necessary? My dress shirts are hung to eliminate wrinkles, this is value added. My gym shirts are quickly tossed into a drawer, I don’t care about wrinkles when working out. There may be value added in folding clothes for space saving reasons, but if you can get away with unfolded, unhung, 0 effort laundry, you should take the opportunities when they exist.
Who knows if Ironing makes a difference in your life. Will spending 5 minutes a day ironing your clothes get you closer to a promotion or getting a Significant Other? I would probably put that 30 minutes/week(25 hrs/yr) into something with a better return on investment, like reading a non-fiction book that is relevant to your life/field/interests or learning a useful skill/hobby(Sewing if you are really into appearance).
Wash clothes less. Pretty obvious here, only wash when needed. No sweat, no stains, no smells, looks good to be worn again.
wear difficult to process clothes even less. My favorite daily work shirt is a polo that is made out of some non-wrinkle fabric like a polyester spandex blend
Kids
“Who wants to get Ice Cream?” Does not need to be said in a quiet and happy house. How much work are you creating for yourself to get everyone dressed, shoes on, and transport yourself? ~10-20 minutes? What does this cost? $10-20? How much joy out of unhealthy calories do you get, ~5-10 minutes? Is it worth it
Do you need to cut your toddler’s food? Toddlers can handle eating things in multiple bites, we don’t need to feed them like babies forever.
Do you need to peel your kid’s oranges and apples? Kids are capable of peeling their own oranges (clementines), apples don’t need to be peeled.
One time my kid insisted on eating the Biryani cold, ok. She ate it all. Easier than warming it up. I’ve been curious to have cold Biryani since.
What’s for lunch? For some reason my family has the tendency to make fresh lunches instead of eating leftovers or ready-to-eat foods like carrots or granola. You can pack lunches in 2-3 minutes, it does not need to be a 15 minute activity.
Create Time with a baby
Add Time
Need 5 minutes for some reason? Tummy time, they are going to cry because its hard, but its good exercise. While my Doctor of Physical Therapy wife would not exactly recommend leaving the room for some legal purpose… Your kid is probably going to be crying for 5 minutes during tummy time, you are going to hear silence if something is wrong. For a normal baby, you can start tummy time at 2 days old. My favorite process is: Baby is crying, put them in tummy time for 5 minutes while I get the bottle ready, feed them the bottle, put them to bed. (If someone wants to be famous, do a scientific study to see how 5 minutes of tummy time, 3x per day affects SIDS rates)
Baby proof an area. We fenced off our entire living room with a baby/pet fence for our first kid. This peace knowing there was nothing dangerous they could get into, gave us freedom to do work in the kitchen. We might have overpaid for our baby fence, but it was well worth it. At 3 kids, the entire home is already baby proofed, so we don’t use fences or gates too much.
Teach your baby to hold the bottle. If our baby was in daycare, they learned this quickly. Basically when the baby is strong and coordinated enough to play with the bottle, its time to start teaching them to hold the bottle. The type of bottle you use may impact this, some bottles are easier to hold than others. Put their hands on the bottle and let go. Do this for a few weeks during feedings and bottle feedings just became recreational rather than necessary. My wife and I can attest to how much fun it is to bottle feed before bed as our usually hyper baby passes out in our arms.
Don’t rock your baby to sleep (every time). That 10-20 minutes you spend rocking your baby to sleep is time that your baby could be learning to fall asleep by themselves. I recently received a text message from a friend that asked ‘at what age do kids sleep without rocking them?’ referring to their 2 year old. I start this when the baby is a few weeks old, especially if the baby is fed, changed, and burped.
Multitask
Do chores with the baby, especially when they are fussy. A baby carrier is best if you are planning on a long session, but even one handed chores are more productive than doing 0 chores. Moving around, I imagine your baby will no longer be fussy, plus you can hand them random objects to look at.
Exercise with the baby present. Stroller running is reasonable for a mile or so on pavement. You can hula hoop, jump rope, spin bike, and lift weights all a few feet from the playroom, depending on your setup. You can even stretch with your baby on top of you. I would lower your expectations for this workout, it should be considered a supplementary workout. Babies are unpredictable and might just start balling their eyes out causing you to stop halfway.
Have some breast feeding plans. My wife sent emails, checked facebook for freebies, did online shopping, listened to audiobooks, and of course endless social media scrolling. Point being, you can have quality multitasking time that are either enjoyable or productive or you can waste it. Have a plan.
Use Technology
Use baby monitors. Between our home security cameras and all of my laptops/tech devices, I can watch and communicate with the kids throughout the house from the toilet.
In disagreement with the non-scientific World Health Organization who used opinions to form their recommended 0 seconds of TV per day, I recommend letting your under 1 year olds watch phonics and count to 100 videos. By age 2, they will automatically associate letters with sounds and can begin learning to read, they will know numbers to 100 and be able to begin adding. I throw in a Periodic Table of Elements song and similar songs into the mix. Consider this is monumentally better use of screen time than showing your kids corporate mascots(Disney/Nintendo/etc…)
Use Manpower
The Kid’s Grandparents can be a good way to soak up a few hours. On a similar note, I have cousins that love babies and will give us an hour or so of freedom.
Siblings are going to be teammates for life, get them into it early. Most kids can attempt a ‘shake the rattle/be silly for the baby’ and confuse the baby into being calm for a moment. This only needs to work once before the bond is formed. The bond of course being the selfish relationship that ‘playing with baby = crying stops’. I think your goal as an efficient parent is to facilitate the kids enjoying each other so playing is automatic.
Baby Waste
Transportation Waste
Clothes, keep clothes close by rather than in closets in far away rooms. We have 4 (stylish) little bins per kid that hold shirts, pants, underwear, and socks and they fit under the tv stand in the living room.
Diaper changes are close by, preferably with everything from the changing mat to baby wipes out and accessible. The main diaper change station is about 3ft or 1m from the tv in our living room. We keep a small trash here. Depending on where you spend time, you may want additional/multiple diaper change areas with essentials only. We have a station in each kids room for bedtime. As a reminder, having to open drawers or cabinets is inefficient, we leave our diaper stuff out. Your baby will be a kid soon enough, I think its okay for a few months/years.
Trash is close by, especially for daily diapers. We keep our extra trashbags/grocery bags under the active trash bag inside the trash bin. Between taking tags off clothes, diapers, and daily living, a living room trashbin can reduce frequent walks across the house.
From 1st kid waking up to last kid loaded in the car for daycare/school, this process could be relatively similar enough to process flow it. Everyone needs to eat, get dressed, and have their backpacks ready for school. There may be some chaos with humans, but if you follow an efficient process, you will make up for chaos with process time savings.
Making Baby Formula should be fast. Bottles, formula, and hot water should all be located nearby.
Might seem obvious, but wherever you plan to do your baby bathing, keep your bath supplies close by.
Before the toys take over your house, it might be good to have a bin for the toys. This makes it easy to pick up the toys as you can carry the bin around. Once the toys take over your house, all walls are covered in facade bookshelves/organizers/bins/baskets to store toys. This makes it easy to clear the floor for company or vacuuming.
Movement Waste
When loading the car seat or do a diaper change: Count. This way you are always racing against yourself and holding yourself accountable for performance. The added benefit is that your kids will like to hear the numbers. While this isnt the same level of quality as recording the process and finding waste, its a 0 time cost alternative that will cause you and your kid to be attentive to the process. (Of course, you can always use process flow to save time as well)
Streamline regular processes(diaper changes) by having materials(diapers and wipes) and tools(diaper change pad) in consistent locations. By always knowing things are in the same location, you will be faster at your process and will avoid errors looking around. Consider other frequent and regular processes. Here are some multiple times per day processes that would be worth standardizing: Preparing a baby bottle, dealing with spitups, putting the baby down to sleep, and anything breastfeeding related. After you have those down, consider daily things like dressing, putting in a car seat/carrier, etc.. (This methodology is called Set In Order and is part of 5S.)
Overprocessing Waste(Working harder than you need to)
Rocking them to sleep is waste, they don’t need it. I understand situations where its the right thing to do, however this is a bigger strategy. Deal with a few minutes of fuss while the baby figures out how to fall asleep alone. (Bonus points for making their sleep occasionally uncomfortable, this will set them up for a life of being able to nap in loud areas, bad beds, bright lights, etc…)
Getting up before 6am is a waste. After they are 3 months old, I believe we are cleared for sleep training which up to me, should be done on that 3 month birthday for our own sleep’s sake.
Holding the bottle is a waste. You/Daycare will teach them to hold their own bottle.
Easy for me to say, but ‘Don’t care about clothes’. This means getting free/used clothes when possible or buying stuff as needed. The goal here is to save time, not have cool outfits.
Don’t buy Toys ever. I’d doubt we spent more than $50 on toys for our kids and our house is filled to the point we give toys away. No need to think about them either.
I don’t think you need a nightly bath. Circumstances like spaghetti night change everything, but a few times a week is plenty. Any reduction is savings. We have a shower time for kids that need help, it is during the time I need to shower a few times a week. I needed to soak for a few minutes anyway.
Do you need to interact with your kids? The Montessori method says no, if they are focused, let them be. Being focused on drawing is desired, being focused on Phonics videos is fine, being focused on baby shark is hedonistic waste.
Overproduction Waste
Make too much formula? It can be reheated later. This means not having to measure anything or scoop formula. Alternatively if I have 2oz of cold formula I might add 4oz of hot formula. This saves from having to wash a bottle.
Make too much food for your kid? Either save as leftovers or eat it.
Waiting
Unless you are spending quality time with your kids, are you just ‘watching’ them? Cook, do laundry, clean, play/teach the kids. Of course chaos stuff is going to happen, but deal with the problems as they come.
Driving them to daycare/school/sports? (Nonfiction) audiobooks. Get some ROI on your time driving, get the books you have been meaning to read. Pro-tip from an avid reader: If you aren’t interested within 1 hour of listening to the book, you can move on, its okay. If you are worried you are going to skip something, I’ve found that important things are repeated by different authors.
Inventory
Outside of baby shower gifts, it may be best to wait until you need something. Marketers are trying to push their products on you, you’d be surprised how little you need to buy to raise a baby.
Clothes should be bought on a need basis. Free clothes and hand-me-downs will reduce the need to buy clothes but season dependent weather may cause you to buy some anyway. Buy as needed, no need to buy ahead of time.
As mentioned elsewhere, toys will fill your home even if you don’t buy any.
Reevaluate if your kid plays with toys anymore, if your future kids will be playing with it, and decide if it can be put away or given away.
Defects
Forget to buy/pack something and need to make a special stop at the grocery store? You may be able to apply logistics to your diaper bag. Push method would be adding things before each trip, pull method would be making a note to replenish the inventory as you get low on materials. If this still becomes an issue, send me an email and it might be worth doing diaper stats to know how many diapers need to be packed.
Dirtied clothes. I’m not sure if I’ll ever learn the lesson myself, always use bibs for eating, you can get away with wearing the same clothes longer and with less washes. In a few cases when the shirt is already dirty, a bib can be forgotten.
Skill Waste
If you are able to work and make over ~$20,000/yr per kid in daycare, it makes sense to send your kid to daycare. I already included the buffer for taxes, consider that your experience with work will grow your resume.
If you have family that would love to spend time with the kids, it’s a form of free babysitting. This can reduce monetary costs or reduce workloads.