Have you ever thought about fixing a routine annoyance or eliminating an extra step in your work, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort? After all, it just takes 30 seconds…right?

Wrong…you need to spend time to save time.

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I get it. Spending time solving a routine problem or reallocating a task that only takes you 30 seconds or a minute can seem like wasted effort. We hear that objection over and over again in process improvement projects. A team will identify a task that really should be delegated, and the person doing it will say, “Nah, it’s not worth it. That task only takes me a minute. It would take me longer to train someone else to do it."

Does this sound familiar to you?

The thing is, problem tasks are usually done by more than just one person, and more than once a day. It doesn’t take long for all the little 30-second irritations to add up to a lot of minutes every week.

It’s true that it may take you more than 30 seconds to design a better way of completing your frustrating task. And it will definitely take you more than a minute to train someone else to take on a new task if you decide reallocation is the answer. But investing that extra time once or twice will mean you never have to waste time on the problem task again.

You Need a Mindset Shift

You should be investing time now to reap serious time dividends in the future, and in perpetuity.

You can actually invest a lot more time than you think. It all depends on how many times you do that routine task. Here is a graphic that shows you exactly how much time you can invest in improving a task before you’re spending more time than you’re saving across 5 years.

Here’s a quick example. Let’s say you want to eliminate a 30-second step that happens 5 times a day in your office

You can invest up to 3 days training someone else to do it or figuring out how to eliminate it entirely—three days!—before you’re wasting time.

Suddenly, solving routine problems IS worth your time.

The next time you hear yourself saying, “it only takes me 30 seconds,” stop. Look at the problem. Invest some time in solving it. You will benefit for years to come.

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