Hey, do you feel like you never have time for anything, and you’re always struggling to catch up?

Fortunately, there are a lot of tips and tricks out there on how to save time. Unfortunately, none of them really work. Some of them you’ve heard from a friend or relative who swears by them, bli neder, but you don’t think they save as much time as these people claim.

Because I mean, doing things faster should work, right? Driving faster, for example! If you drive faster, you get your errands done faster. Or your commute! If only everyone else on the road had the same idea. But I mean in concept, right? It’s the equivalent of running versus walking! Running is at least twice as fast as walking! At least we think so. There’s no speedometer. Whereas driving has a speedometer, so we know: Driving faster is twice as fast as driving normally only if you’re going 120 miles per hour. There are actual numbers involved. If you’re driving somewhere that’s an hour away and the speed limit is 60, you will have to go 90 for a full minute, putting everyone in danger for 60 seconds, in order to shave just 30 seconds off your drive. You will then spend that saved time looking for parking, or waiting for someone to make a left off the off-ramp.

Here’s an idea that a lot of people suggest: Meal prep. At the beginning of the week you make six days of meals and that way every night you’ll be serving leftovers, which your kids will pick at, and you won’t have to make as much food in the long run. But even that is just shifting the time to a different day. You’d be spending every Motzei Shabbos making six meals, which is basically all the fun of cooking for a three-day Yom Tov, but it’s every week, and right after Shabbos.

A similar tip that everyone gives is that if you want to save time in the mornings, lay your clothes out the night before.

Okay, but I don’t have time at night. If I had time at night, I’d go to sleep a little earlier and then I’d have time to lay the clothes out in the morning. Again, you’re not saving time; you’re just moving the time. Why not do the meal-prep thing and lay out clothes on Sunday for the entire week?

Neither of these tips really saves you time, though, because in actuality, if you do things ahead of time, they take longer. Like how if you start cooking three hours before Shabbos, it will take you three hours, and if you start six hours before Shabbos, it will take you six hours. And likewise, laying out clothes the night before takes more time because first of all, the very act of laying out clothes is an extra step you don’t bother with if it’s the morning. You just take it out of the closet and put it on. And if you lay your clothes out the night before, you’ll notice a loose thread, and then you have to find a scissor, and throw out the thread, and so on, rather than just taking care of the thread on the train with your teeth like everyone else.

Maybe some things save time, but definitely not as much time as you picture. It’s always a delicate math equation to figure out if it’s actually saving time, and you will never do that equation because that takes time you don’t have.

For example, I have a relative who says that if she wants to pop in to a simcha for a few minutes just to say mazel tov, then instead of taking time to get dressed, she just throws on a nice, long Shabbos coat over her weekday clothes and keeps it on the whole time. So I presented this idea to my wife, and my wife asked me, “What do you think takes me longer—putting on Shabbos clothes or dealing with a sheitel and makeup and shoes and stockings?” Maybe if there was a coat that covered all of that.

This idea might work for men, though—just throw on a long enough coat. And maybe a tie that peeks out above the coat. And if you can manage to keep eye contact with the baal simcha for the five minutes that you’re there, no one will notice that you’re wearing weekday shoes. Whereas if women don’t wear the right shoes and they just maintain eye contact, their friends will be like, “Is it just me, or was she a different height than usual?”

So not every time saver is well thought out. Like for example, I could tell you that instead of spending an hour every night coaxing your kid through his homework, why don’t you do the homework while he sits there impatiently? It will take only five minutes! I mean, the teacher said at the beginning of the year, “All the homework that I give should take only five minutes,” and you have not found that to be the case. He means for an adult, maybe. Like for him. Or for you.

I do have some other tips, though. For example, one way to save time on taking out the garbage is to push it down with your foot. This way, you only have to bring out the garbage half the time.

Another time-saving tip I have that a lot of people will argue with is to not take off your shoes the minute you get into the house. That way, no one has to wait for you to put them on when it’s time to leave. But even that has a downside, in that your floors are a little bit dirtier.

But it does save you time putting your shoes on when you want to push the garbage down.

“Nah, I just keep a pair next to the… Who keeps throwing out my shoes?!”

So basically, there is no tip that works across the board, and anyone who claims otherwise is just wasting your time. Case in point, I just wrote an article about time-saving tips that it turns out don’t work, and I’m still behind on my work, and I just wasted everyone’s time.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].