Closed September 2017

Losing “Wait”

Blurrystopwatch2For everyone out there who is trying to save some time, Sprint has put out a new website called "waitless.org" that gives little tips and tricks to save time and stop waiting around for things in life.  Here are the things they list on their site, with little video demonstrations of each:

  • Speed-tie your shoes (saves 4 days of your life)
  • Quick-peel an egg (saves 4 days of your life)
  • Instant shirt removal (saves 3 days of your life)
  • 2-minute soda chill (saves 1 month of your life)
  • Instant baby soothe (saves 3 weeks of your life)

There is also a "time calculator" if you want to calculate how many years you spend doing x, y, or z, etc. The idea is that Sprint wants people to "stop waiting" until 9:00pm to make calls like with other companies and go with them to start getting unlimited calling after 7:00pm instead, ostensibly saving you four years of your life… I don’t know about that, but it is fun and entertaining. I have to add that for the instant baby soothe, when the usual things did not work, we found the sound of a vacuum cleaner to be astonishingly effective at silencing our colicky infant back in the day.  It worked so well that we actually recorded the vacuum cleaner sound on a cassette tape (I am dating myself…) and used it in the car!  This was not a masking of the crying sound, this actually made the baby STOP crying in his tracks, as it were.  It’s worth a try!

I am of the opinion, however, that finding shortcuts like this are great, but it’s better to think about the biggest time-wasters first and focus on solving those as best as you can. Is there something you could delegate today to another person?  Is there a process improvement that can even eliminate tasks altogether?  Are there things you could do online, like bill-paying, that would really streamline things?  Are there places you can stop driving to and mail something there instead?  Think about it…

Have a great weekend!

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