Speedrunning my Morning Makes the Coffee Taste Weird

If you drive at night, you will not be limited by the speed of light, and can arrive in minus five minutes!

I do employ an optimization strategy on my clothing: each evening when I get home from work, I change into the next day's outfit before dinner. That way I can just put it back on in the morning, skipping the part where I have to select and find new clothes. This also means I can dress in the dark, which is less disturbing to Partner.

As for sleeping dressed, I've found that messes with my ability to thermoregulate overnight, leading to worse sleep on average. If I were planning to skip my alarm on one occasion, it would probably be worth it, but the Dressed Before Bed strat would probably lose me time overall if I used it routinely due to cumulative sleep loss.

Now that I think about it, I could just keep the hair short for time saved daily. Partner won't go for that, though 😉

You know, I used to drive much faster than I do now. I found it kind of counterintuitive when I discovered how little difference it actually makes doing 80 instead of 65 (or even 45 [1]) MPH on the highway! That said, my commute is only about 20 minutes at either speed, and is the most RNG heavy part of my morning. It's super easy to lose those few seconds back to traffic anyway. Factor in the added risks (and loss of fuel efficiency), and I'm afraid it's just not worth it for me.

[^1] There was a resurfacing project a while back that capped the speed limit and caused traffic to slow down like crazy, but I still got to work at almost the exact same time as when I was speeding recklessly down the road!

For sure! In fact, I do some things in that mode all the time. For example, most of the cognitive load left in my workday is dedicated to routing the most efficient path on the fly so I can fit more tasks in less time (and therefore have a leisurely lunch time). The primary reason for deliberately making my morning routine less efficient is to make sure that when I need to save time, there's plenty of time to save. Some things are better done with great efficiency, while others benefit from having built-in buffers for when things go wrong.

Also, I like my coffee brewed a bit longer.

🕐🕜☕😁

Can you learn to braid your hair faster (but in a way that doesn't cost you time later*)?

I'm certain I could, but given that this is the first time I've ever had to get through my morning starting off with a 30 minute deficit I don't think it would be worth the investment. It would be pretty simple to just start braiding my hair instead of binding it up the way I do now [1], but I would lose many of the benefits of the current method. In particular, my hair gets tangled much more easily in a braid than if I put it up "correctly".

I keep the hair long mostly because Partner likes it that way. (And she knows that, which is why she didn't complain about being awakened so early.) I'd really just as soon cut it off as be bothered to train up a new skill. But as long as Partner is willing to work with me on the extremely rare occasion that I need to do something like this, it needn't come to that. Braiding is pretty sub-optimal for the reasons that I wear the hair up anyway; it just happened to seem like the fastest way to gain a portion of the usual benefits in that moment.

[^1] My normal style is to make a banded a ponytail like this, then tie it in a figure-eight knot so I don't have to have all those elastics digging into my back as I drive. Takes 7-10 minutes, but results in close to no tangle and keeps my waist-length hair out of the way.

Do you have to rush getting dressed to pull this off...

If you mean do I normally rush getting dressed, no. My normal routine of "get dressed then start water" is calculated to reduce trips up and down the stairs in the dark [2] , and reduce the amount of casual nudity in the common areas for the comfort of my other housemate in the warmer months. It usually only takes a short time for me to dress, and the kettle works pretty fast, so it's not normally an issue.

[^2] Yes, I could turn lights on, but that always runs the risk of waking people up. As does running up and down the stairs a lot. Also, tripping over things and making loud crashing noises. There's a balance to be had there, and I've noticed that moving in a deliberate manner seems to take care of it nicely.

Optimizing for time as something that doesn't sacrifice time...

Absolutely true! And there are lots of things that I normally optimize for efficiency as you describe, with time weighted more heavily than other factors where possible. But in the case of my morning routine, (and despite that I could theoretically be out the door in less than five minutes from the time my feet hit the floor), I've generally found it most efficient to give myself about a half hour between my wake-up alarm and the time I need to leave the house, mostly because less time means I'm far less awake. Net benefit of taking my time is an increase in coordination and situational awareness for most of the morning. Worth! (usually)