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I wonder what you do with all the 20 minutes total you save a year. Still I don’t blame you but I’m a person who enjoys doing things the “hard” way, that lets you enjoy the results and contemplate things in a different way.


For me, it's about not being late or having to skip tasks (e.g. shaving). I used to also enjoy doing everything the "hard" way (e.g. pourover coffee instead of using a machine, and especially shaving with a double-edged safety razor instead of an electric razor).

However, there were times I had to skip coffee making to start a commute on time. The tipping point was when I was slightly late for a couple of low-stakes meetings because shaving with a safety razor took so long (lather, three passes, rinse), so I had to take an alternative commuting route after missing a train. There were other times when I chose to skip shaving and buy coffee outside to make a meeting on time (taking extra time to walk to the coffee shop, line up, and buy coffee).

I remembered never having these issues of having to skip shaving when using an electric razor. I've now returned to using one for most days, and also usually use a brew machine. It's nicer to have less stress in the morning.

You could say that I could manage my time better in the morning by waking up an extra half hour earlier, but I've found it very nice to make my life a bit easier while other parts of my days are more stressful.


It's not about 20 minutes saved per year, it may be about 3 seconds of intense frustration not experienced every morning. Can be well worth it.


No one ever does or can do “everything” the “hard” way. We all have our own opinionated and preferred lists of easy way and hard way things. e.g for me that’s fountain pens, train journeys instead of flights, paper journals, exclusively reading paper books etc.

Saving time from shaving doesn’t necessarily mean the saved time will be used in something like saving the world. It just means less time was spent on shaving than it would have taken if OP did shaving your so called “hard” way.

Also your 20m shaved annually seems very weird. There are approximately 365 days in a year and one “easy” way shave, imho, definitely saves more than approx 0.055m compared to a hard way shave if one shaves daily without a miss :-P




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