Difficulty vs Time

I used to cook from scratch 5-6 nights per week.

Then the pandemic hit.

And we had a baby.

Suffice it to say, delivery meal kits became our new way to eat reasonably healthy without the time and energy of planning and shopping. Home Chef to the rescue!

We can choose from Easy, Intermediate, and Expert level recipes.

As you might expect, Expert-level recipes tend to taste better than Easy. But the real surprise came when I discovered that cooking time wasn’t correlated with the level of difficulty.

Sure, some Easy recipes only take 15 minutes, i.e. “throw these ingredients in a pan and heat it up.” But other Easy recipes took 50-60 minutes.

And likewise, some Expert recipes only take 20-25 minutes, but involve precise cutting and require a watchful eye during cooking (1 minute too long will ruin scallops, for instance).

Our instinct is to associate difficult tasks with taking a long time, and therefore we associate paying more for things that take longer.

If it takes a plumber 3 hours to fix the toilet, I expect to pay more than if it took her 20 minutes. But really, that’s backwards.

I should be paying way more for the plumber who is so knowledgeable they can diagnose the problem in 5 minutes and fix it in 10. Get it, get it done, and get out so I can get back to work.

Consider your own work as a business owner, service provide, coach, consultant, speaker, or leader:

Can you do really difficult work in a short amount of time?

Make sure you’re charging based on the time you save people, rather than the time it takes to do it.

Difficult doesn’t mean time-intensive.

It just means difficult.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make Mahi-Mahi with a caper aioli.