How Small Changes Can Lead to Big Time Savings

Sometimes what seems to be a foolish decision can be an amazingly good decision. It all depends on your ability to realize that little things add up. A lot.

When I’m working with coaching clients, we often need to help them find the time to pursue new initiatives in their lives. Often, the new time comes from very small changes.

A few weeks ago, my 7-year-old computer died. It was old and pokey. Programs took several seconds to launch. Maybe twice an hour, I’d switch applications and get the cute spinning beach ball for 30 seconds while the new application fired up. And woe is me if I had to switch back and forth between Mail, word processing, and diagram programs. The beach ball and I bonded. We were BFFs (emphasis on the last F).

When the system died, I screamed and screamed and screamed...in delight. Because now I had an excuse to buy a new computer! I ran right out to the Apple store and snagged a nice, new iMac. Only this time, I spent the extra few hundred dollars for lots of memory and a really fast hard drive.

BOOM! Major life change, instantly!

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Time Adds Up

Now, computing’s a breeze! I switch between applications as quickly and easily as politicians switch between deeply held policy positions when pandering for votes. Everything is snappy and responsive. And my mind is clear. I realize that I waited for my sluggish system three or four times an hour. In an eight hour day, that’s 32 times I waited 30 seconds or more for something to happen. That makes 16 minutes a day.

Using the 3/30 rule, you will quickly realize that these minutes add up to 1 1/2 weeks every year. Watching a spinning beach ball. Dreaming of—but not doing—productive work. So much for my vacation. Saving a week and a half a year more than justifies buying a new computer. A week and a half a year for 7 years is 10.5 weeks, gone forever. All because I was too cheap to shell out the bucks for a faster processor and a little more memory.

Lesson learned: buy a fast, speedy computer. It will more than pay for itself.

Key Fumbling Adds Up

Then there’s my house key. It’s in the middle of my key ring. Every time I arrive or leave, I grab my key ring and fumble around to locate the right key. In winter, it means putting my groceries down in the snow, soaking the bag through with ice water, and removing my gloves so I have the dexterity to deal with the keys. Great fodder for guilt-tripping the nieces and nephews, but…honestly. I do this 5 times a day. If it adds 20 seconds to my commute each time, that’s 4–5 minutes a day. Multiply by 365 and we get 12 hours a year. I spend a day a year fumbling for my keys.

If it adds 20 seconds to my commute each time, that’s 4–5 minutes a day. Multiply by 365 and we get 12 hours a year. I spend a day a year fumbling for my keys.

My schmoopie—whose IQ leaves me in the dust—just laughed and laughed before pointing out an easy solution: get two housekeys. Put one on each end of my bundle of keys. Then, no matter how I pick up the keyring, the very endmost key is always the door key.

Cost to duplicate a key: $1.29. Time to put key on keyring: 30 seconds.

For $1.20 and 30 seconds, I can have an extra day a year. Worth it? You bet!

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File? You’re Nailed!

Then there’s my file system. My files are mostly archival. That’s a nice way of saying I’m a file hoarder. Most of my files have no useful purpose whatsoever. But there are a few files I use quite often.

Being pretty, er, retentive when it comes to filing, my files are carefully filed in alphabetical order. Every time I need one of my common files, I walk over to my filing cabinet, search through it, and pull out the appropriate file. When the work is done, back it goes.

You can see where this is going. If it takes me 30 seconds every time I do this, and I do it 20 times a week, that’s a couple of hours a year. You may say “Stever! This is great! You’re getting an extra 2 hours of weight lifting and mild aerobic exercise!”

But you forget, I’m a studly manly-man who takes after Get-Fit Guy, Ben Greenfield. My exercise should be intense, at the gym, and include throngs of admirers “Ooohing” and “Ahhhing” from the sidelines. Didn't you read or listen to my series on Becoming a Gym Stud(ette)? Yeah, that's right, Parts 1 and 2.

Getting back to my files, once I saw the inefficiency, I moved my common files to a little hanging file near my desk, and voila—an extra two hours a year I can use to go to the gym and inspire people.

Little Things Add Up

What all these examples have in common, other than being about wonderful me, is that they show how small things add up. The small things are pernicious because individually they’re nothing. They’re so small that when we do a cost/benefit analysis, we never fix them. Our brain says, “It would take a thousand dollars to eliminate this 30 seconds of spinning beach ball. That’s silly!” If only we realized, in that moment, that these things happen over and over again. And when you realize that, they’re very much worth fixing!

Monitor your life for a day. Look for little activities that take a little longer than they should, but not enough to seem worth fixing. If the activity repeats, figure out how much of your life gets sucked into the activity each year. Now do what it takes to solve the problem once and for all. You have one precious, valuable, irreplaceable life. If you’re going to waste it, don’t waste it waiting for a spinning beachball. Trade it to a VooDoo priestess for the power to read minds. It’s much more fun than waiting for Excel to load.

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