Drink Your Coffee Black

One of my greatest passions is strategic efficiency.  It could otherwise be called effective self management, and in the 80s it was called time management.  The curious thing about efficient living is that it is a labor that is nothing near linear, but in fact it is filled with downfalls and speed traps.  Let me give you an example:

Recently I purchased a wifi enabled washing machine and dryer.  I was excited that I could put my clothes in the washer in the morning and on my way home push a button on my phone to start the wash.  That way, when I arrive home, my clothes are washed and just need to be put in the dryer.  A task that normally took over an hour in my day was now only about 20-30 minutes of my focus.  That useless time at the wheel became useful.  What a novel idea.  The trap I fell into was the extreme amount of time it took to program the app.  I am 3 hours into working with it and it still doesn't work.  So until I actually get this app working I have to do at minimum 6 loads to have any sort of time savings.  Not great.

That brings me to drinking my coffee black.  It was something I have done for about 10 years now and has already saved me about 480 hours of time.  You see, I drink a lot of coffee.  Loads of it.  When I visited Costa Rica last year they had my picture on the wall of a coffee plantation.  "Pura Vida Donai" is their slogan.  For the sake of this post lets say I have 4 cups a day.  Well, putting cream and sugar in your coffee on average takes 30 seconds.  Try it out the next few times you do.  From walking over to where it is, opening the packets, pouring the cream, stirring, etc it all takes about 30 seconds.  Well that's 2 minutes a day for me at 365 days a year.  That is 12 hours a year saved just by drinking my coffee black.  Do I do incredible things with that time?  Not always.  Sometimes I just read on the internet, sometimes I get a few more moments enjoying the sunrise, and sometimes I do use that to send one more email or learn one more thing.  The point is, its my 12 hours a year to do what I want with.  Over the average coffee drinker's lifespan that is about 50 days you save.

Now I know what some of you will say.  "Steve, why don't you just give up coffee all together and you can save even more time?"  To that I respond that while I am all for saving time I am not about sacrificing the things that make life wonderful for doing so.  Coffee makes life wonderful, but there is a way to enjoy it and make your life more effective as well.

Thanks for reading,

Steve