In life, there are lessons available to use everywhere. We

just have to have our eyes open to spot them. I have

picked up some really useful time-management tips from

watching a cooking show. Suspend your disbelief and let me

explain further.

I don’t watch a lot of television because it can be a huge

time drain. But I enjoy experimenting and cooking, so I do

watch a few cooking shows now and then. One of my

favorites is “30 Minute Meals” hosted by the ever perky

Rachel Ray. Her claim to fame is that she can show you how

to prepare healthy, great-tasting home-cooked meals in 30

minutes. Who can resist that?

After experiencing more than a few episodes of her program,

I’ve come to realize that she is a master at using time.

That’s how she can get so much accomplished in 30 minutes.

And here are her “secrets” that you can easily adopt.

Spend time in Planning

Most cooking shows lasting 30 minutes will feature maybe

one item. In “30 Minute Meals”, Rachel Ray generally

prepares three to five items working alone in her kitchen.

She doesn’t have helpers and the ingredients haven’t been

pre-chopped or diced or julienned ahead of time. She

doesn’t have another perfect soufflé sitting in the oven

waiting for her to whip out at the end to show you how it

should turn out. She really does the cooking in “real

time.” So how does she do it?

Before Rachel Ray even steps foot into her kitchen, she has

the entire process for preparing the meal planned out.

Does the dessert take longer to cook than the entree? If

so, then it makes perfect sense to start the preparation of

the dessert first. She knows which sequence of steps is the

most efficient based on the planning. She knows exactly

which ingredients she needs from the refrigerator so that

she only needs to make one trip, which saves her time.

So, here’s our real life application. When you look at

your list of things to do, or errands to run, how can you

use planning to become more efficient? How many “trips to

the refrigerator” can you save by improving your planning?

Utilize Every Minute

This may sound like a no-brainer, but how many of us are

really experts at this like Rachel Ray. She constantly

talks about her “pockets of time.” When the water is

heating up for pasta, she uses her pocket of time to chop

onions, butter bread, cut up chicken, and anything else she

can fit in. By using these little pockets of time, she

whips up a meal in 30 minutes.

Now for our real life application: how many times have you

put off doing something because you only had 15 minutes and

the task takes an hour? What if you can’t find a whole

hour to work on that task for another week, but you can

actually squeeze in 15 minutes everyday for the next 4

days? By using your little pockets of time, you are able

to complete the task this week instead of next week.

That’s the secret to getting more done.

Become a master at this like Rachel Ray. If you only have

10 minutes before you have to go to a meeting, return one

phone call. This gives you the perfect incentive to be

efficient about concluding the call. Pick up pockets of

time everywhere and see how much more you can accomplish

during your day.

Simplify whenever possible

Rachel was making a creamy tomato soup one day. Everybody

knows that home-made soup takes hours. What was she

thinking? Instead of putting in whole tomatoes and letting

then cook for hours and then straining and blending the

mixture, she put canned tomatoes with some garlic and

celery into a food processor, and added the mixture into

her pot of hot milk. She simplified the process! Some

gourmet will probably shudder at the thought, but the soup

looked pretty appetizing to me, and I’m sure it is much

better than opening up a can of Campbell’s.

Often times we do things a certain way because that was how

we were taught. The sad truth is, how we were taught might

not be the best solution anymore. Technology is changing

everyday and there are so many more resources available to

us now that were unheard of even a generation ago. The

more steps there are in a process, the more opportunities

there are for errors. Look at what you are working on and

how you are completing the task and try to simplify it if

at all possible. A direct result of that is improved

efficiency, which results in more time for you.

Now you have the time management lessons I’ve learned from

the cooking show. Apply them and see what a difference

they make to your day. And if you’re cooking, I’ll be

right over.