How Efficient Do I Need To Be?

2025-01-16

Having two kids and a full time job I dont have a ton of free time, I would say I get about 2 hours a day. After putting the kids down there are two things that I need to do to keep my sanity, doing dishes and cleaning. But there is also a long tail of activities that I would love to do like, a coding project, some deep cleaning, baking something for fun, learning a new skill, watching TV, playing video games, etc. I definitely have more activities that I want to do than free time.

But if I am more efficient with my time, I kind of get to do more things in the same amount of time. If I can wash dishes and watch TV then I get to be twice as efficient and get to do more of the activities I want. If I bake and I clean then I can waiting for something to cook in the oven and also folding laundry. These examples are pretty much no brainers for me now.

But there is a limit and I see diminishing returns in efficiency. It is really really hard for me to multitask, and after years of trying I have basically given up. I literally cannot watch TV and have a conversation, both will suffer if I try to do both at once. So instead I try to pipeline things, start a load of laundry and then write code for a side project and after the laundry is done stop coding and move it to the dryer. So at the same time I have two things in flight even though I can only attend to one of them at a time. And this is good but two is basically my practical limit. When I start pipelining three or four things I often start to do them badly. In the mornings I rush to: make coffee for myself, make our son breakfast, pack his lunch for the day, and pack his bag for school. And sometimes I try to do too many things and I burn his breakfast, or the coffee gets cold, or I forget to pack something for him, and that is a nightmare. I would rather do everything well and slower than efficiently half ass things.

So I see efficiency as a trade off, there is some low hanging fruit, like doing dishing and listening to a podcast, there is almost no downsides. But at some point on the efficiency scale quality starts to fade and usually that is unacceptable to me, so I dont want to push it too far.