How to Save at Least an Hour On Meal Preparation When You Work at Home and Have To Cook For Yourself

by Adam Appleson

Imagine you're the President of the United States of America. You have to juggle complex economic issues and handle foreign policy crises that spring up from out of nowhere. Plus, you have your family that you have to spend time with, not to mention any extra reading you have to do as part of the job. Did I forget to mention you have to spend time campaigning to let people know what a good job you're doing? Of course that's why you have a personal chef to cook for you and your family. It's simply realistic to outsource that particular task to someone as you just don't have the time to prepare it yourself.

But in reality you're not the President.
And you do have to cook for yourself. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." So how do you save time on meal preparation? How do you make sure you're optimizing the most precious resource you have - time?

Have you tried cooking your meals one week in advance?
What I like to do is prepare all my dinners one week in advance. I pick the day, say Sunday, and do all the meal preparation during that time. Because I eat a simple lunch and breakfast (sandwiches for lunch and cereal for breakfast), the only major meal that requires preparation is dinner.

The other thing I do is that I eat virtually the same dinner everyday. This has two benefits - it simplifies shopping and it also simplifies the advance preparation. I estimate I save at least 6-7 hours per week in meal preparation time just by doing this.

You might think this gets boring.
Most days, if you're working full-time and trying to get a small business going, you really just need to eat something, and how exciting it is really doesn't matter. But to deal with those days of boredom, I always have a plan to eat something different one day per week - whether that means I plan an extra meal or go out to eat.

You aren't the President of the United States.
But you've still got important things to do. The Pareto principle states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Meal preparation won't build your work-at-home business (unless your business involves learning how to cook). So focus your time on the 20%, not meal preparation.

If you liked this article, you may be you may be interested in some inspiring attitude quotes or reading 7 Tips On How To Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Own Long-Term Linear Goal So You Don't Burn Out.

Adam Appleson has been actively involved in using personal development techniques to promote psychological health and goal-oriented success for the past 11 years.

He is the founder of ZenTactics, a website with advice written especially for child abuse survivors.