I used a spreadsheet to save myself 12 hours a year grocery shopping

On 2022/07/29 By Dan SlimmonIn Mind hacksLeave a comment

I do most of the grocery shopping for my family. Which is, of course, a privilege. But it’s a time-consuming privilege. From the moment I enter the supermarket to the moment I enter the checkout line, it’s about 30 minutes on average. Multiply that by 49 grocery trips a year, and you get 24.5 hours spent in the supermarket annually.

That’s 24 hours hours a year when I’d rather be doing basically anything else. The whole experience of grocery shopping grates on my nerves: jockeying for position with all the other shopping carts, getting the goddamn cleanup robot in my way, listening to the inane patter of the pre-recorded PA messages. It’s miserable.

All considered, I don’t mind doing it. My family needs to eat, and this is part of the cost of eating.

Buuut…

Why does it take me so long?

When I finally reach the end of the slog and look in my cart, I can’t help but think, there’s no way this should’ve taken me 30 minutes. There’s just not that much stuff.

So I started paying close attention to how I spend my time. Ideally, the process would look like this:

Walk to where the milk is
Put milk in the cart
Walk to where the eggs are
Put eggs in the cart
Walk to where the bread is
… and so on.

In reality, though, the process is much more like this:

Look at the list and decide what to get first
Walk in the general direction of that item
Hopefully find the item there, and put it in the cart
Take out my phone and check it off the list
Look at the list again and guess which of the remaining items is closest
Walk in the general direction of that, hoping I’ll see the right overhead sign and not miss the aisle
…

This process involves tremendously more context switching than the ideal. Because of deficiencies in my brain, I can’t remember more than 1 or 2 items at a time, and every context switch entails a risk of forgetting what I was in the middle of doing. Compounding with this problem is that my grocery list isn’t sorted in any particular order. I’m at the mercy of my incomplete knowledge of supermarket geography: if I miss an item because I walked past the aisle it’s in, I have to waste time walking back to that aisle.

This close examination of my time expenditure got me thinking: how much of that 30 minutes could be optimized away?

Better grocery shopping through data

It became clear that, if I wanted to spend less time in the supermarket, my best bet was to calculate the most efficient travel path through the store. Backtracking and searching were huge sources of waste. Instead, I wanted to take a single pass through the store, grabbing everything I needed as I went.

The first solution that popped into my imagination was to write a script that could take my shopping list, compare it to data about the supermarket’s layout, and produce step-by-step instructions. The instructions would look something like this:

Starting from the store entrance,
Go up Aisle 24. Find bread on the right side.
Toward the back, find milk on the left side.
Head to Aisle 14. Find yogurt against the back wall.
Go down Aisle 12. Find coffee on the right side.
…

I implemented this as a simple Go program called grocery-run. This script contains a hard-coded shopping list, store layout, and arrangement of items. The simple routing algorithm traverses the aisles in order, walking down any aisle that contains an item on the shopping list, and checking that item off. It keeps track of which direction I’m walking so as to order the items appropriately and predict which side of the aisle the item will be found on. The output of grocery-run looks like this:

This served decently for a few weeks. Each weekend before going to the supermarket, I would transfer my shopping list from the place where my family keeps it (Trello) into the code. Then I’d run the script and transfer the output to written form in a notebook. I was of course losing time with all these transfers, but my main goal at the time was just to validate the hypothesis that a path-finding algorithm like this could save me time in the long run. If that hypothesis turned out to be correct, then from there I could set my mind to optimizing away much of the overhead of using the script.

At the supermarket, I’d follow the instructions on the paper, noting the locations of any items that weren’t yet in my data set for later entry. This data recording too was a drain on my time, but – I reasoned – one that would disappear as my data set grew over multiple trips.

The initial results were encouraging! Even with the extra time spent noting item locations, I was spending the same amount of shopping time per trip. And I was also learning some important things:

The left/right information wasn’t especially useful. Since I was spending no time mucking with my phone (as I was before, when I would refer to the list on Trello many times over the course of a trip), my eyes were free to scan the shelves on both sides of an aisle.
The front-of-store/back-of-store information wasn’t that useful either. Because I always knew which item was next, I would see the item as I reached it. Then I could use my own judgement about whether to continue walking to the end of the aisle or turn back.
Time spent noting item locations was indeed decreasing: from week to week, the store wasn’t getting rearranged much.
A paper shopping list was far more efficient than using my phone. First of all, I didn’t have to go through the distracting and time-consuming exercise of taking my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it, scanning the list, and putting it back. And moreover: since the order of the paper list was aligned with my path through the supermarket, I didn’t even need to spend time or attention checking things off. Everything before the current item had already been grabbed, and everything after it remained.

The next iteration

This grocery-run script served decently, but it ended up being a stepping stone to an even simpler solution. Since I didn’t need the left/right or front-of-store/back-of-store data, it turned out I could replace my whole script with a spreadsheet. When you can replace a script with a spreadsheet, it’s almost always a win.

Here’s the spreadsheet. It does basically the same thing as the grocery-run script. There’s one sheet for the current shopping list, one for the store layout, and one for the arrangement of items within the store.

This spreadsheet makes use of a feature of Google Sheets that I hadn’t leveraged before: VLOOKUP. This function lets you construct a lookup table in one part of your spreadsheet, which can be referenced from another part. I think of this by analogy to JOINs in SQL:

    SELECT shopping_list.item

    FROM shopping_list
    JOIN store_arrangement ON item
    JOIN store_layout ON aisle

    ORDER BY store_layout.visit_order;

My workflow with this spreadsheet is more or less the same as before:

Transfer shopping list from Trello to spreadsheet
Sort shopping list sheet by the “visit order” column (this step corresponds roughly to running the grocery-run script)
Transfer the resulting list to paper

The final shopping list looks like this:

The left column represents the aisle, with empty spaces indicating repetition.

Before and after

Before this intervention, my grocery shopping process was circuitous and wasteful.

Now it’s much more streamlined. Much less backtracking, no more futzing with my phone, no more checking items off the list and getting distracted in the meantime.

All told, this saves me about 15 minutes a week of shopping time. Over the course of the year, that’s

(15m) * (49 weeks a year, adjusting for vacation) = 12.25h

I like to think of this as about 1 book: due to this optimization, I get to read about 1 extra book a year, or do something else of equivalent value. Plus, I get to spend 12 hours less each year listening to that insipid Stop & Shop PA loop. I’ll take it!

A simple intervention against Ugh Fields

On 2022/07/15 By Dan SlimmonIn Workflow1 Comment

For a year and change, I’ve been using a home-grown, constantly evolving task-tracking system I call Impulse. Part of the deal with Impulse is this: when I think of something I need to get done, I write it down immediately and get back to whatever I was doing.

Later, the thing I wrote down gets merged into a workstream. A workstream is list of tasks in the order I intend to start them. My two main workstreams are work (stuff I’m getting paid for), and personal (stuff I’m not getting paid for).

Impulse’s central principle, which is both obvious and, for me, life-altering, is that the more time you spend doing a thing, the more of that thing you will get done. Sure, there are other variables that play a role in determining output – focus, effectiveness of planning, and a match between your skill set and the work you undertake, to name a few – but time spent working is the most important.

Consequently, I try to arrange my life so as to allot some time every day to working through the tasks in my workstreams. I work from top to bottom, in whatever order the tasks are in at the time I start.

Among the myriad benefits this system has brought to my life is that it mitigates the effect of Ugh Fields.

Ugh Fields

An ugh field is a flinch response to thinking about a given domain of life, conditioned over time through repeated, self-reinforcing negative associations.

For example, I’ve long had an ugh field (or, as I’ve called it before, an attentional sneeze) around replying to texts from my family. I won’t go into how this ugh field developed. It wasn’t my family’s fault; they’re great. Point is, every time I thought about family texts I needed to reply to, my mind would flinch away. Over time, this flinch came earlier and earlier, and with less of a connection to any real source of discomfort. It grew through a feedback loop: think about the texts, flinch away, accrue consequences for ignoring them, think about those consequences, flinch earlier and more forcefully next time.

By succumbing to this ugh field, I’ve done significant damage to my relationship with my family. But the damage is not irreparable, and Impulse is helping me repair it.

Attenuating the ugh field

How can a simple task management system help repair years’ worth of self-conditioning? The key is to decouple the commitment to do a thing from the doing of the thing.

Time was, I didn’t have anywhere in particular to keep track of my plans and obligations. When it occurred to me that something needed doing (e.g. “read that my friend sent me”, “paint the railing on the back steps”, “reply to Dad about getting together in August”), I either had to do the thing right then, or remember to do it later. Thanks to attention deficit, this choice constitutes a dilemma. If I do the thing now, then I’ll lose track of what it was I was doing right beforehand. But if I decide to do the thing later, I’ll almost certainly forget to do it.

Now I have a third choice: record the task in my “inbox.” No matter how trivial it seems, just record it for now and get back to whatever I was doing. Later, on a recurring basis, merge the inbox into my personal and work workstreams.

Right off the bat, this helps. When I think of something I need to do, I don’t need to act on that thought right away. In fact I shouldn’t: that would distract me from whatever I’m already doing. I don’t have to feel bad about putting the thing off, so I don’t have so much of a flinch response.

Then, when it comes time to merge the tasks from my inbox (which is a Google Keep note) into the personal and work workstreams, there’s no longer an ugh field to overcome. I just put each task somewhere on the list, depending on how soon I want to get around to it. Here, another benefit kicks in: I’m forced to compare any new tasks to the other tasks I’ve committed to do, on equal footing.

Work’s just work

Because I’m comparing each task to all the others on a single dimension (i.e. where in the execution order to slot it), instead of a flinch-inducing dreaded obligation, I now just have another piece of work that will take a certain amount of time and create a certain amount of value. Like any other task, there are only 2 ways to get it off the list:

Spend time doing it, or
Decide consciously not to do it.

Either outcome is fine. What matters is that, instead of flinching away from even considering a task, I end up having an explicit conversation with myself about whether and when to do it. This lets me make better decisions.

This benefit is compounded by the way I burn down the workstreams. Somewhere in my day plan, there’s always some scheduled “heads down time,” during which I will execute tasks in a given workstream. For example, starting at 3pm today, I’ll do personal tasks. Always starting from the top of the list.

This means there’s no time to dread the ugh tasks. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m choosing the best thing to work on at a given moment, or what’s next afterward. I just have to trust the commitment I’ve already made to myself and do things in the order I’ve agreed to do them. The deciding is decoupled from the doing, which is an enormous help.

If you’ve come up with a similar arrangement, or if you’ve solved this problem for yourself in a different way, I’d love to hear about it! Hit me up in the comments.

Takeaways: managing attention with stacks

On 2021/03/212021/03/21 By Dan SlimmonIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Last week I wrote about a system I’ve been using to manage my attention. It’s inspired by the call stack, but it presupposes no knowledge of computer science. Since I need a name for it, I’ve been calling it Impulse.

Since that post, I’ve been using Impulse more seriously. It has been super illuminating. My practices are in rapid flux at the moment, but the core workflow has more or less solidified to the following:

Each line represents a task.
A task can have child tasks, which appear above the parent task and indented.
The top line is always the thing I’m currently working on.

At first, I thought Impulse was just a to-do list flipped upside down. But now I think it’s more than that.

Making a to-do list involves writing down all the things you need to do, and committing to do all of them. There are many who find this comforting! The list represents a finite sequence of discrete steps, and once you’ve gone through all the steps, you’re done. You can relax.

For me, it’s quite the opposite. I get paralyzed thinking about all the possible activities I could potentially do that might be valuable. If I let myself, I’ll sit there for an hour just silently panicking about what should be on the list. Should I tidy up my desk today? Should I clean the bathroom? Should I put my DuoLingo on here? Should I add a task to reply to that email from my Dad? Should I add breaks? Now the list is way too long to get done before lunch. Should I cut some things? Which things are most important? Which things are most urgent? Oh shoot, I also need to get groceries today. Which means I don’t have time to… and so on. It’s exhausting and it doesn’t get me anywhere.

With Impulse, the focus is always on the top line. That’s always the thing I’m currently doing, no matter what. I don’t have to worry so much about whether everything important is on the list, or whether it’s in the right order. I can just bang away at the thing on top, abiding in faith that if I simply spend time doing things, things will get done.

Here’s another way to look at it: with Impulse, the process of choosing what to do is decoupled from the process of doing it.

This makes work much less overwhelming. When I’m working, I never need to worry about how my current task fits into the big picture, or whether I’ve skipped a step, or whether there’s something more valuable I could be doing instead. There is only one thing to do: the line at the top of the stack.

I’ve been using Impulse for a whole bunch of purposes. As a to-do list when I’m puttering around the house:

dishes
fold laundry
throw out coffee cup
fold baby laundry
clean roomba, put back
outline followup blog post on impulse

To break down a task into pieces and make it more manageable and help keep track of where I am:

        wire clipper
        new strings
        something to put under guitar neck
        tuner
    get equipment together
        loosen all strings
        cut all strings
        throw old strings away
    take off old strings
    ...
restring guitar

To keep track of things I want to follow up on later:

write widget function
    reply to RFC comments
    tidy up desk
    order thai food
review at end of day

And I use it in many other ways that are less well defined but no less intuitive.

Current implementation

Right now I’m just using Vim and Git. The stack is a text file in a Git repository, and I also maintain some buckets as auxiliary text files. Here’s a snapshot of the buckets I’m currently using:

pink: (called “pink” for historical reasons) Tasks that are ready to start, which don’t demand sustained focus, and which can probably be done in under 15 minutes. Examples: check whether there's a better time for that weekly meeting, fix dead link on website, read that Stephen Malkmus interview I saw
blue: (called “blue” for historical reasons) Tasks that are ready to start, which do require sustained focus, and which will probably take longer than 30 minutes. Examples: read RFC that Tom sent, connect anti-tip kit to bookshelf, watch latest Philosophytube video
ongoing: BIGGER projects that are currently in flight. I try to keep this limited to 2, and I’ll pull tasks from ongoing into the stack when I have time. I use ongoing to think through the next few steps of a project, and those steps are organized in the same way as the stack. Examples: write impulse followup blog post, document disaster recovery testing procedure, prepare slide show for shitposting Zoom
project: Projects that are not in flight. I pull these into ongoing as it empties out.

In addition to the files listed above, I have a few templates, which I can pull into the stack to represent tasks that I need to do repeatedly. Some of these templates are:

matins: A sequence of activities I do every morning when I sit down at my desk: personal email, work email, work slack, and planning out how I’m going to spend my day.
vespers: A sequence of (much less structured) activities I do at the end of work.
restring_guitar: The process for restringing a guitar, organized into an Impulse task. It’s a thing I do so infrequently that I always forget how to do it. So Impulse is a nice way both to save that information, and to learn the process more thoroughly.

This Vim/Git approach works… okay. There’s definitely some friction. Sometimes parent tasks get separated from their children because I’ve made a mistake moving things around. Syncing is a pain, because I have to remember to pull and commit and push. But despite these and other difficulties, I still find it super helpful to work from a stack.

The software angle

As soon as I started using Impulse consistently, I ran into the age-old problem of consensus. I have both a work laptop and a personal laptop, and I use Impulse on both. It immediately became clear that the whole thing falls apart as soon as there’s more than one stack.

So the biggest challenge I can foresee in building a software implementation of Impulse is distributed consensus. I have some ideas about how to handle it, which may one day come to take the form of an eventually consistent object store built on top of Git. But I think I need to ignore the consensus problem for now.

Instead, I’ll try to hone a super streamlined ncurses-based UI for a single, in-memory Impulse instance:

--- Moving the Cursor

j ↓     move cursor down
k ↑     move cursor up
h ←     move cursor to parent
l →     move cursor to child
t       move cursor to top

--- Moving tasks

J ⇧↓    move task down (among its siblings)
K ⇧↑    move task up (among its siblings)
H ⇧←    move task left (make it a child of the task that's currently its grandparent)
L ⇧→    move task right (make it a child of the sibling directly above it)

--- Changing tasks

c       add child task(s)
s       add sibling task(s)
d       delete task
Enter   edit task name

--- Etc.

?       help (this message)

This should keep me busy for a while. Then I’ll see where I’m at.

Managing attention with stacks

On 2021/03/152021/03/15 By Dan SlimmonIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I have ADHD and anxiety. They interact, and it’s impossible to say where one ends and the other begins.

I can focus on a task, but if I get distracted, it’s often very hard to bring myself back to whatever I was doing. The cost of “context switching” – rebuilding the mental edifice of what I was doing and why and what I was going to do next – is exceptionally high for me. Sometimes the context switching is so cumbersome that I get distracted again before it’s done. Depending on the degree of anxiety bouncing around in my brain, this cycle may just repeat until I run out of day.

So there’s that, and then there’s also this: I’m mostly in technical leadership roles these days. I spend a lot of time in meetings and Slack threads and emails, which means I don’t get much heads-down time in a given week. And what heads-down time I do get is often split up into hours here and half hours there. Plus I have a kid now, which, while wonderful and great, is another way that my calendar gets all chopped up.

In a given week, then, if I want to accomplish any significant effort that requires focus (usually writing, research, or coding), I need to minimize the cost of context switching. To this end I’ve lately been using a system inspired by the call stack. (Note: I say “inspired” because it is not a direct analog of the call stack; please don’t expect it to be.)

Suppose I’m coding. I open my text editor to write code, but I also open another text editor to an empty file, visible on the same monitor. I call this empty document the stack. Whatever the thing is that I need to do, I write it in the stack:

implement widget feature

Implementing the widget feature is a multi-step process, though, so I need to create a few children of the implement widget feature task:

	write definition and doc string for widget function
	write widget test
	implement widget function such that it passes tests
implement widget feature

Children of a task appear above the task and indented. The three lines above implement widget feature are its children.

When working with this stack system, the top item on the stack is always the thing I’m currently doing. So, in the example at hand, I’m currently working on the task write definition and doc string for widget function.

But maybe, when I get to work writing the doc string for the widget function, I remember that I saw a good blog post about how to design functions like this. Maybe I want to reread that blog post before I commit to an interface. That’s fine! I can push (add at the top) a line for that:

		reread that blog post i saw
	write definition and doc string for widget function
	write widget test
	implement widget function such that it passes tests
implement widget feature

Now the top item in the stack is reread that blog post i saw. So I load up the post and start reading.

Of course, after I’ve read a few paragraphs, I see a Slack notification that I need to attend to: an alert about API latency. Normally, I would go deal with that, and by the time I got back to my terminal I’d have to rebuild all my context. But with this stack system, I can just add an interrupt: a task that temporarily steals the top slot. Like so:

deal with API latency alert
		reread that blog post i saw
	write definition and doc string for widget function
	write widget test
	implement widget function such that it passes tests
implement widget feature

As always, the thing I’m currently doing occupies the top line in the stack. So now I’ll hang out in Slack and Datadog for a while, digging into this alert. That may involve adding children of the deal with API latency alert task, or it may not, depending on how much I need to hold in my head. But let’s say it doesn’t – my teammate says she’s on it, and she doesn’t need help.

So I come back to the stack and pop that task off it. By “pop” I just mean delete the line. Since my current task is always the topmost line in the stack, I always delete (pop) the top line. Now I’m back to the widget work:

		reread that blog post i saw
	write definition and doc string for widget function
	write widget test
	implement widget function such that it passes tests
implement widget feature

I don’t have to worry about remembering what I was in the middle of. The top line is reread that blog post i saw, so I can immediately jump back into that. When I’m done, I pop that task and move on to whatever’s now on top. And so on and so on, popping lines as I finish them, adding lines as I think of followup tasks or feel the need to break down tasks by adding children.

I’ve started a Github project called impulse to elaborate on this idea, but so far the README for impulse is entirely aspirational.

Anyway, that’s my stack system. If you have context switching difficulties like me, try it out! It’s cool.