Irony of the Day: A Cell Phone Company Teaches Time-Saving Techniques

One of the greatest challenges of grad life is time-management. Most recent grads are just as ineffectual as they were in college, but for slightly different reasons. In college, the amount of free time is so vast and overwhelming that you feel paralyzed to perform even the simplest task—everything feels like such an effort that you’d consider pressing a button that says “End the World” if it meant you didn’t have to buy new toothpaste.

When work and bills and “feeding yourself” kick in, you are in a routine where you are constantly “doing things” (or pretending to do things), so it’s not so difficult to throw a few more tasks into the day. But now a new, unfamiliar problem arises: there just isn’t enough time. (I would say that “there aren’t enough hours in the day,” but this expression is nonsensical and displays an ignorance of the solar system.)

To help shave time off boring tasks, Sprint has set up Waitless.org, a site with short instructional videos on things like “peeling a potato” or “tying your shoe.” Presumably, you can use the extra time to talk to Sprint customer service, a task that literally takes ages.

Some of the tips are sort of useful (though the Tokyo Drift style parking job just looks like a recipe for disaster), but they ignore the fact that they often require extra preparation or washing up that, on net, will waste time. A bit small-minded, Sprint. A bit selfish.

My favorite parts of the site are 1) the nice girl who teaches “sand-removal,” and 2) the “Calculate Your Time” feature where you can figure out how long you spend on any task throughout your lifetime. After saying I spend approximately one minute per day talking to nutcases in the street, I learned that I will do this for a total of 2 weeks and 6 days in my life. (Sprint’s small print offers a friendly reminder that these calculation are based on a 78-year lifespan and they are “not responsible for how long you actually live.”)

Honestly, if I could just get it all out the way now I would agree to hang out non-stop with a mental person for an entire fortnight. But the world don’t work like that…