Reduce chores, don't reschedule them

Make sure you're really saving time with 'time-saving' tips

When it comes to time, people have an odd tendency to believe their future selves will be different from their current selves. The average person is likely too present-focused (“I’m sure my future self will figure out how to fund retirement!”).

But for people who read productivity tips, there’s often a different temptation: we believe our future selves won’t be able to handle anything.

That’s the main reason I can figure out for the elaborate rituals people sometimes undertake to get ready for the week. As I’ve written about work and life, for instance, I’ve had a number of women tell me that their mothers told them the secret to being a working mom was making all the meals for the week on Sunday. Yep, that means spending all afternoon Sunday making four full dinners and then freezing them. I recall a magazine feature where a woman put all her children’s outfits for the upcoming week in little hanging cubbies labeled with each day. This meant she was putting together 15 outfits on Sunday night.

Even folks who don’t do all that might pack multiple lunches the night before.

There may be reasons for doing these things. But what gets me is that they’re often billed as “time savers.” Like when I’m interviewed for back-to-school articles, and asked for time-saving tips, the writer will often prompt me “What about making lunches the night before?”

Spreading it out

My answer is that unless you’ve figured out a way to pop out of bed and get out the door instantly, you’re going to spend some time on weekday mornings getting ready no matter what you’ve done the night before. Doing a lot the night before means you’ve just spread your getting ready over multiple time periods, rather than doing it all at once. This doesn’t save time. You have rescheduled your chores, rather than reducing them.

Perhaps there are some scenarios where that is wise. But here’s the thing. My future self is as capable as my late night self of pulling size 4T sweat pants and a shirt out of a drawer. My morning self will be able to put some easy foods in a lunchbox for the little guy while my coffee is brewing and my eggs are cooking (and capable of funding the lunch accounts for the older kids to buy their lunches!)

Getting everything ready for the week on Sunday likewise just reschedules — and possibly increases — the time spent on chores. I have almost universally found that people who meal prep for the week on Sundays don’t just pull out whatever they made on weeknights and put it straight into their mouths. That frozen lasagna has to thaw and heat up, and during that time they’re making a veggie side dish and…It might have been just as easy to serve pasta that cooks in 20 minutes, without the Sunday rigamarole (if you want lasagna, cook it and eat it on Sunday!).

I believe in reducing chores, rather than rescheduling them. When you reschedule chores, you wind up pushing them into what could be leisure time. Or you decide to still have your leisure time after doing chores, and you go to bed too late. Grumpy mornings are never calm mornings, even if you laid out outfits, made lunches, and otherwise followed all that advice.

Believing in the lunch fairy

Rescheduling chores creates another problem: you might move chores to times when other family members don’t see them (ooh, the lunch fairy visited again!). You might also wind up doing work that other people could do. If the secret of being a working mom is doing the week’s meal prep on Sundays, this implies that the job of feeding a family belongs solely to that working mom. Not only will your future self be competent enough to make omelettes or other easy meals for dinner, other people aren’t incompetent either. Perhaps other family members can take a turn cooking!

There are lots of ways to make life easier. Rescheduling chores often does less to make life easy than reducing them. So better to go for the latter when it’s an option.