“Dammit,” I muttered to myself out loud.
Since I bought my new phone 8 months ago, every time I click on Spotify it opens into Drive Mode.
So at least 6 times a day, I click the cancel button and then click confirm.
It injects an imperceptible amount of cortisol, and only wastes
half a second, both of which are small enough to ignore…
…but over the 2 years I’ll have this phone…
…that’s 18 minutes of my life and 2,190 jolts of cortisol…
…all because I didn’t take the extra 3 seconds ONE TIME to go into settings to set Drive Mode to “never”.
That’s just one example of taking the “shortcut” that ends up actually taking longer over the entire journey.
Other examples include:
– Writing the same email 64 times instead of taking 2 minutes to add it to TextExpander
– Trying various password versions (only to reset it), instead of taking 3 minutes to add it to my password manager (I actually don’t do this one anymore!)
– Making the same update to everyone’s Financial Zen Workbooks, instead of changing the template.
In small doses, it’s no big deal. But at scale, it’s the difference between good or bad margins.
It’s a lesson I’m constantly relearning because when you’re flying at a million miles an hour, you just need that thing done as quickly as possible even if it means extra clicks or keystrokes.
But keeping the long view in sight can help maintain focus on doing it right, instead of doing it fast… which ends up actually being faster in the end.
…it also helps you from cursing your phone like a crazy person in the middle of the gym…
