As a Productivity Ninja, one of the great pleasures in life is having plenty of time on my hands. Whether I chose to use that free time well is another question. But I certainly spend a lot of time cooking food, eating food and thinking about food.
Without wishing to appear virtuous, I never eat fast food. Not out of principle, really; I just don’t think it tastes particularly good. But I can see the logic of fast food - it saves you having to spend time preparing and cooking the stuff; you just eat it. You outsource the hassle of preparing and cooking to a low-wage human, whose time is (by definition) less valuable. This frees up your day for doing more constructive, creative, brilliant things.
Anyway, I was recently passing a MacDonald’s in London. Looking at the people in the restaurant (if “restaurant” is the right word here) I was struck by two things. First, these people all looked incredibly unhappy. I mean miserable - not just at the crap they were putting in their bodies, but also (possibly) (a) at their inability to break this habit, (b) at the low-rent, fake ambience in which they were sitting, (c) with the appearance and manner of their fellow diners, and (d) at the broken brand promises made by the $100 billion MacDonald’s Corporation to its enslaved consumers worth, I suspect, rather less than $100 billion. “i’m lovin’ it” - spiritually, nutritionally and grammatically, No.
But second, I pondered on whether the MacDonald’s customers were likely to avail themselves of the opportunity to use their time - as they could - constructively, creatively and brilliantly. I thought possibly not. If ever a crowd was the X-box, sofa-bound generation, this was it.
This made me commit to using my time properly. There is no point in freeing up time, Ninja-style, if you are just going to surf the web. More importantly, it made me resolve to get full satisfaction from sourcing great ingredients, committing to careful preparation and cooking, and eating with people who matter. And if that takes more time than a trip to MacD’s, so be it.