The “zero-effort” time-saver series is a collection of short tips that I actually use to save time and be more productive. The key is things that are actually useful, cost basically nothing, and don’t take huge amounts of effort to implement.

First up: tear your sugar packets along the long side rather than the short side. The sugar dumps out more rapidly, which is the big time lag with sugar. If you drink 4 cups of a tea when spending a Saturday morning in Starbucks like I do, you might save a minute or so.

What’s a minute? Well, if I do that every week, it’s an hour. And, if it’s wasted, what’s the point of that? I reject the framing of the issue that says I have to justify saving a minute (again, with no effort and no cost); I say “why should I waste that minute?”