Second Cup: Go with the closer one

Less time spent running around means more time for everything else

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good Morning. This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Today's tip is to go with the closer one unless
there is a really good reason to choose something that
is farther away. Minimizing travel time can make life feel
a lot more doable. So a new supermarket just opened
about five minutes from my home. This is quite exciting,

(00:39):
as the building had been empty for several years before
the nearest grocery stores were all ten to fifteen minutes away.
While that doesn't sound like a huge difference, if you
happen to have forgotten a key ingredient for dinner, it
kind of is. Someone can zip over to the new
place and dinner is only delayed by fifteen minutes, not

(01:02):
half an hour or more. Now, as a frugal person
who pays attention to this sort of thing, I can
tell you that this grocery store is not the cheapest
for everything my family eats, but proximity is worth a lot.
I want there to be a grocery store located near

(01:23):
me and my neighbors. So unless I know this grocery
store doesn't have something I want, I tend to do
my shopping there. In life, proximity in general is.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Worth a lot. If you track your time, you will
see that a lot of any given day is going
to be spent getting from one place to another, to work,
to your kids' schools, to the grocery store, to kid activities,
to your house of worship, or to another family member's home.
The difference between a grocery store that is ten minutes

(01:59):
away verse five minutes isn't huge. But if you go
three times a week, that is thirty minutes more spent
in transit. If your kids take dance classes and one's
studio is ten minutes away and one is twenty five
minutes away, if you go twice a week, that is

(02:20):
an extra hour in the car. That second dance studio
better be much much better to justify it. So, as
you are figuring out your life, ask that question, is
it worth an extra hour in the car per week
to go to this place? I would argue that for

(02:40):
a great many things in life, it really isn't. Most
dance studios will teach a fairly similar introduction to tap
dance class. If your child shows real promise, then you
can start looking around for a studio that offers very
specific things. But in the meantime you can use this

(03:01):
as a rule of thumb. Go with the closer one.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Less time spent getting to and from places means more
time you can actually do things in your life. Now,
this might not be immediately doable, but I'd argue that
you can also choose to live close to things as well.
It might be worth trading off some square footage so
your commute is twenty minutes instead of thirty five. If

(03:29):
you commute four days a week, that is a savings
of two hours per week or one hundred hours per year.
That is enough time to write a novel or train
for a half marathon. Living close to things might also
inspire different behavior. If you are five minutes from your gym,

(03:50):
you might go when you have a free hour.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
If you are twenty.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Minutes from the closest gym, you are not going to
go unless you have two hours or more, which might
be harder to come by during the week. Because we
live only eight minutes from our church, I can run
back and forth pretty easily on Sunday mornings if we're
going in shifts for various different things. If we lived

(04:17):
twenty minutes or maybe even fifteen minutes away that probably
wouldn't happen. A lot of stuff in life is generally
good enough. So my local gas station may be slightly
overcharging me. I am still really happy that there is
a gas station five minutes from my house, so if

(04:39):
I am low on gas, it is not a huge
ordeal to go fill up. When you go with the
closer one, not only do you save time, the closer
one is more likely to keep existing, and that is
a big win in many ways. Meantime, this is Laura.

(05:03):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

(05:30):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
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