Topics About Nothing: How Much is a Tenth of a Second Worth

Topics About Nothing is a series of posts where I do a thought exercise about the banal aspects of my life.

In my first post, I’m tackling an everyday action that many of us do daily: setting the timer on the microwave.

For today’s question, I’m pondering if it’s worth saving a tenth of a second by being a more efficient microwave user.

Granted this may be a save a penny vs. make a dollar choice - one where you’re trying to save on the margins but actually may gain significantly more by investing in something else.

But alas, let’s think this one through…

Imagine you’re putting your favorite leftovers in the microwave to reheat for a quick meal. Say you need to put it in for around 1 minute.

You have three options - you can type in:

• 1 - 0 - 0
• 6 - 0, or my personal favorite…
• 1 - 1 - 1

It’s marginally faster to type in the same number repeatedly vs. switching numbers.

In my unofficial, self-timed typing trials, it took me 2.27 seconds to type the number “1” for ten digits repeatedly. Typing “1” - “0” for ten digits, took me 3.57 seconds.

Over 10 digits, I would save about 1.3 seconds.

Unscientifically, if I (wrongly) extrapolated this out to typing 3 digits, it would save me 0.43 seconds per microwave visit.

On average, I use the microwave once a day, 5 days out of the week. Over the course of the year, that’s about 260 trips to the microwave.

According to my math, my simple technique could save me a whopping 111 seconds per year. Over a lifetime (90 years), this would give me back 2 hrs and 48 min of my life. Priceless…

Ok, I get it. This is not the life hack I thought it would be lol.

#MakeDollars >> #SavePennies

P.S. Typing two digits 8 times (vs. 10) took me 2.68 seconds. According to my (wrong) math, this would net me about 53 minutes extra over a lifetime. A savings, but at what cost...