Jennifer lived in a three-story townhouse in a very crowded city. It took forty-five minutes to drive one mile to work in the morning. It took another forty-five minutes to drive back at the end of the day.
On the days when it was her turn to drop off the kids at school, things were a little worse. She needed to drive her kids a half mile to the school, followed by another mile and a half to go back.
In addition, she had to stop at a drive-thru and get her children breakfast. Like everything else in the city, the drive-thru had a very long line and a very long wait.
At least the kids could eat in the car, though. That saved Jennifer a little time.
All told it took her three hours to get to work on those days.
She couldn't be late to work, so she had to get up earlier on the days when she was supposed to take the kids to school.
Her husband had it even worse, so she couldn't just have him do the dropoff every day.
The children were very tired, getting up so early for school and they were very cranky when she picked them up, after, because they had to wait so long for her to finish work and collect them. This meant that getting everyone ready took even longer than usual.
They tried getting a smaller car so they could zip in and out of traffic. This was surprisingly effective. It cut an average of five minutes off her daily commute when she didn't have the children and a full ten out of her roundtrip when she did.
They tried getting a faster version of the small car so Jennifer could exploit even more of the open spaces. The returns were diminishing, saving maybe a minute each direction.
They tried working harder to get the children ready in the morning. They acted like drill sergeants and Jennifer's daughter and son were both miserable, but the savings were a whopping fifteen minutes a day.
Every time they tried to make the commute easier, they either had little effect or no effect. Eventually, the changes started to turn against them.
The city's traffic problem was getting worse, as they tend to do. The children began to push back, as they tend to do. The police began to take notice of the hyper-aggressive car following the same short route every day, as they tend to do.
One day, while she was trying to force a shirt onto her son, he asked the obvious question. "Why do we sit in traffic?"
"Because that's how we get places," answered Jennifer.
"...but school is so close," said her daughter. "Couldn't we walk there faster?"
"Well," thought Jennifer, "I guess we could."
"...and couldn't we just walk in to get our breakfast?" asked Jennifer's son.
"Probably."
After they were ready, they put on their warm coats and left for school. A few minutes later, they were at the fast-food restaurant they frequented for breakfast, every day. While the line in the drive-thru was very long, the lobby was nearly empty.
They stepped right up to the counter and ordered. They were surprised by how quickly they were served their food and they finished their meals in less time than they spent waiting in line, the day before.
They departed and headed for school, which took a few more minutes. After dropping off her children, Jennifer was able to walk to work in less than half an hour...and she felt great.
Instead of spending her time clawing and grasping for position, she strolled down the street, planning her day.
That night she told her husband about her revolutionary life-changing discovery. She offered to take the children every day so his commute could be a little easier. It didn't take long for her husband to follow suit, walking out of the knotted-up downtown traffic and catching a rideshare the rest of the way to work.
It's not always this obvious, of course, but we all have little things in our life that we expend time and energy trying to make easier when, instead, we should be trying to not do them at all.
