Time You are not a UPS truck. Stop avoiding lifes left turns

Time You are not a UPS truck. Stop avoiding lifes left turnsTime You are not a UPS truck. Stop avoiding lifes left turnsPerhaps youve seen this time-saving hack making the rounds UPS trucks almost never make left-hand turns Should you do the same?Or maybe youve seen thatkitchen time-saving hack pre-soak your pasta, so it cooks quicker Then theres my personal favorite DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the commercials. You save about eightminutes every half hour, so in the course of watching twohours of TV, you find 32 minutes to exerciseThis is true, but you know another way to find 32 minutes to exercise?Dont watch two hours of TV.Time hacks in general often miss the pointTime hacks maysave minutes here and there, butthose minutesare easily squandered on other things. Its betterto focus on the big picture and do the important stuff first, and the bits of time will take care of themselves.Lets start with those UPS trucks. It makes sense if you have thousands of t rucks making thousands of turns to optimize what you can, but the average person lacks this scale. Rather than reroute to avoid twoleft turns while doing errands, join Amazon Prime and get stuff delivered. That waythose UPS trucks are on the road (avoiding those left turns) rather than you.Youll save much more time by lowering your standards than by any particular strategyI collect old magazines, and one of my favorite time saving tips from a 1960s Good Housekeeping was to use a butter knife to spread wax evenly on your floor waxer. Most of us dont spend a whole lot of time waxing our floors these days,which turns out to save more time than any butter-knife technique. You can fold your towels more efficiently, but if you re-use your towels, youll be doing less laundry and hence less folding. Or you could find a wash-and-fold service that delivers.You can streamline your morning routine and get an app that sends your bestellung to the coffee place before you get there. But it might b e an even bigger win to negotiate to work from home once a week. Yes, you might need to make your own coffee, but youll have plenty of time with the twohours you save.As for the DVR, theres nothing wrong with fast-forwarding through commercials. But I suspect that most people use the eightminutes saved every half hour to watch more TV threeshows when once you only would have been able to watch two. This is certainly efficient, but its not very productive.Think about what you want to do more of with your timePlan the big stuff- the meaningful stuff, the fun stuff- first. Having trouble getting out of work by 7 p.m.? Try getting tickets to a sports event that starts at 7 p.m. You might surprise yourself with how efficient and motivated you are.I used to think I didnt have much time to read. Then I started getting some real page-turners, and wow I found all kinds of time. I didnt actually make more time, but it felt like it.When we build the lives we want, time saves itself.Laura Vande rkam is the author of I Know How She Does It, 168 Hours and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast.