Today, the Wall Street Journal’s Cranky Consumer column tackled the growing industry of milk delivery. Actually a very old-fashioned industry, the milkman is staging a comeback as consumers become more interested in organic products, and in purchasing the wares of local farms. The Cranky Consumer columnists quite liked the experience, writing that “there is a sense of comfort in knowing that as many old rituals disappear, the milkman is still around.”

I like the idea for a different reason — getting milk delivered is more efficient and can actually save you money.

I know this is hard to believe, at least on the money front. When I was writing 168 Hours, one woman mentioned that she had her milk delivered. I looked it up and was rather surprised by the prices charged by, say ManhattanMilk.com. $4.99 for a quart? Really? (To be fair, some other services charge much less — the Manhattan milk is straight from Amish farms in Pennsylvania, and practically still mooing).

But the more I thought about it, the more I could see that she had a point. Buying milk is one of those activities for which the economics and time involved in theory are much different than those seen in the real world.

Here’s what happens: Families with lots of kids go through a lot of milk. It’s most efficient to grocery shop from a list (either in person or on-line) once per week. The problem is that while milk can last 7 days, it doesn’t always last 7 days well. Plus, use is variable, and since it goes bad, you seldom buy more than you need on your weekly grocery shopping trip. Net result is that many families run out of milk at some point during the week. So it’s a common occurrence for one person to run an errand (perhaps on the way home from work) to pick up milk on, say, Thursday. But making a grocery shopping trip during rush hour, especially for one item, is about the least efficient move you can make from a time perspective.

On some level, people know this. So — perhaps to make the experience more efficient in their own minds — they don’t just buy milk. They’ll buy a basketful of other groceries that they might use, plus whatever looks nice on an end cap display, a copy of People magazine, etc. None of this stuff is really necessary. If it was, it would be on the weekly list! While the gallon of milk only costs a few dollars, it’s hard to get out of the store without spending $20. Particularly if you’re hungry. I am a sucker for the aroma of rotisserie chickens.

If you get your milk delivered in the middle of the week, however, you’ll save time (which is worth something right there) and you may save money, since the only thing you’ll be paying for is the milk. Even if the milk costs $15 a gallon you still might be coming out ahead!

No, it’s not a 4-hour workweek. But according to this article from Time magazine, Utah’s state experiment with keeping its government offices open longer hours, but only being open four days per week, has been a success.  Even though people are working the same number of hours, not having to heat or keep the lights on in buildings on that fifth day has reduced energy costs by 13 percent. Employees save on gas and, more critically for us on this blog, they save time commuting as well. And apparently, they don’t suffer from burn-out. While this will be obvious to those of us in the private sector, a 10-hour day turns out not to be too burdensome.

Indeed, I think there’s a lot to recommend it, compared with an 8-hour day. Every time you get up and go to work, there are transaction costs: getting ready, commuting, the little rituals people have (such as checking headlines and getting their coffee) when they show up at work. Since these are sunk costs, you make them back over the course of the day. If you quit after 4 or 5 hours, as some people who work part-time do, you’re probably not going to be that efficient. By 8 hours, though, you’ve really cut down on those fixed costs per hour worked. If you work 10 hours, you cut them down more. Twelve hours would cut them even farther, though at some point you do encounter the burn-out issue. I tend to think this kicks in around 12 hours for people, and if you look at people’s actual time logs, most people claiming to work 80 hours per week are in fact working less than 60 — or a bit shy of 12 hours per week day. This is the point of diminishing returns. But up to then, your returns on investment increase.

This suggests that, if you’re going to work 35-40 hours per week, the basic definition of full-time, you’re best off working 3 12-hour days. This concentrates work in blocks of time where the transaction costs are lowest, and lets you indulge in some longer leisure pursuits as well. Interestingly, this is the schedule many nurses work, and nursing is widely regarded as one of the “best” professions. But 4 10-hour days isn’t bad, either. The transaction costs are low and you get a full extra day for concentrated blocks of leisure. Of course, the environmental benefits are nice, too, but as so often happens, the “green” solution is actually the optimal solution for other reasons too– it’s always good to use scarce resources (energy, time) most efficiently.

I’m in the midst of reviewing Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives for City Journal. This book, by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, discusses the science of human connectedness, and why social networks dictate a lot more about human behavior than we tend to think.

It’s a fascinating book (though I’ll save the review for City Journal!). There is definitely some relevance for how we spend our 168 hours — though there is a bit of a conundrum, too. Friends make life more fun. So do spouses and (if we’re lucky) colleagues. These connections can make us healthier, too! However, when you’re building a Career with a capital C, and raising a young family, it can be tough to find time for friends, or even meaningful interactions with your colleagues or spouse. How can you fit it all in?

The answer, I believe, is a special form of multi-tasking. Namely, you build in quality time while doing other things that require different parts of your brain. The most obvious example is sharing a meal with a friend. You have to eat anyway, so you may as well use that time to deepen a connection. Other good choices include exercising with a friend, volunteering with colleagues or your family (at least with somewhat mindless work like stocking a food pantry or spiffing up a classroom), carpooling with your spouse, scheduling play dates with kids whose parents you really like, or even going to the grocery store at the same time as a friend.

All these things allow you to focus, to a large degree, on the other person, while doing something else that can facilitate conversation and bonding. This makes them different than a more awful form of multi-tasking like trying to have a conversation with your spouse while you check email. This is not forming a connection. If anything, it’s breaking a connection to behave as if the person in front of you matters less than the pixels on a screen.

Update, 11/19: The review ran at City Journal’s website today with the title You Say Potato, I’ll Say Potato.

That’s the subject of my most recent USA TODAY column–about how, by living as frugally as possible, Americans who lived through the Depression (or other lean times) came up with eco-friendly solutions that we now spend good money trying to approximate. Today’s seniors who raised their own chickens and made dresses out of re-purposed feed sacks have more green cred than most of us can dream of! On the other hand, many of their methods did take a lot of time. Gathering soap chips to make your own household cleaners is cheaper than buying an eco-friendly commercial version, but probably not as efficient. Precisely because unemployment was so widespread during the Depression, people felt like they had more time to do things. Time and money will often be trade-offs, and as people become wealthier (which they certainly are now vs. during the Depression) they will tend to exchange what is less scarce (money) for what is more (the 168 hours we all have each week which, alas, are completely inelastic).

Looking to get out of the house the other night (see the post about 168 hours and an infant), and not wishing to cook, I decided to try something I rarely do: get take-out. I was reminded that I don’t do it for a simple reason: it isn’t that fast.

First, you have to get to the restaurant. If it’s remotely busy (which you hope it is because a dead restaurant is not a good sign for food quality!) then you have to wait in line. Then you have to wait for them to make your food. Even if you’ve called ahead, the whole thing isn’t going to take less than 5 minutes, and probably more like 10. Then you add in the extra travel time — again, a minimum of 5-10 minutes on both sides — and soon you’re talking a half hour.

By contrast, scrambling some eggs and throwing some frozen veggies in the microwave takes a grand total of 10 minutes, meaning you could be done with dinner by the time your take-out would be on the table. Boiling angel hair pasta also takes less than 10 minutes. Throw on a jar of sauce, cut up some tomatoes and mozzarella and open the Chianti and you’ve got Italian night in 15 minutes flat. Thin sliced pork chops topped with BBQ sauce take less than 10 minutes to cook on the stove top. You can throw some peaches into the pan and make up a box of instant couscous and, again, you’ve got a full home-cooked dinner in less than 15 minutes. Indeed, Rachel Ray has made a whole career of showing people meals that take less than 30 minutes.

Now, obviously, there are certain restaurant dishes which are hard to copy at home. I am not about to attempt my own sushi. And some people just hate to cook. If that’s you, then there’s no point spending even 15 minutes on it. But even though I brought along my journal to take advantage of the 10 minutes or so I knew I’d have to wait for my food (10 uninterrupted minutes are a beautiful thing when you’ve got a newborn) my take-out experience reminded me that there’s nothing particularly efficient about eating this way.

Many of us feel like we don’t have a lot of recreational free time these days. In fact, we have more time than we think, but the problem is that much of it seems to come in small spurts — good for watching TV, but not for things that help us truly “recreate.”

While I was writing 168 Hours, one of the tips people gave me for getting more out of your leisure time is to force open blocks of time into your schedule. Challenge yourself to finish work early, or designate a certain evening as a family recreation night. Then make sure you plan ahead to know what you want to do during those times.

I’m trying to do that this fall. I’m never terribly efficient on Friday afternoons anyway. I tend to finish the work projects I have to get done before then, and while I could start researching or pitching something new, it’s usually easier just to send random emails, look at Facebook, read headlines, etc. So as I’m gearing back up into working post-Sam’s birth, I’m consciously trying to stop work by 1pm or 1:30pm on Fridays. Once Sam is fed and happy, I’ll load him into the Baby Bjorn and go see something fun in the city (Jasper is in preschool during these afternoons, though I tend to pick him up pretty early on Fridays, too).

This past Friday was my first attempt at this scheduled Mommy-and-Me time. Sam and I wound up going to the Morgan Library. I stopped in on a lark — I’d kind of forgotten the museum was there on Madison — but I was really glad I did. I got to see the original drawings Maurice Sendak did when he was writing Where The Wild Things Are, see some Puccini original scores, some Fragonard drawings and William Blake’s engravings and hand-written poetry. Oh, and a Gutenberg Bible. In particular, I was heartened to read a hand-scrawled note from Sendak as he plodded through the original version of Where The Wild Things Are (it had something to do with wild horses…and it wasn’t that good). He noted that the story simply couldn’t be forced, and so he was abandoning it. Of course, a few years later, the idea came gallumping back in the wild rumpus we are all familiar with. Writing is rarely a smooth process. So anyway, not only did I get to see great art and spend time with Sam, I learned that even genius story-tellers have rough spots. Not bad for a Friday afternoon stroll! Hopefully, this is a harbinger of good Fridays to come.

Life is a bit busier in my household these days as we welcomed little Samuel Dwight Conway on September 24. He was surprisingly big — discharged at 8lbs 8oz, which means he was likely born weighing a little more than that — and continues to expand rapidly. He was 8lbs 12oz at his one week pediatrician appointment. His big brother Jasper weighed 7lbs 4oz at the same time, and he has not turned out to be a small kid!

So clearly, Sam is eating a lot, which I am personally quite aware of, being his sole source of nutrition. While he’s a reasonably good sleeper for a 2-week-old baby, he is, in fact, 2 weeks old, and so I am still on a round-the-clock nursing schedule and will be for at least the next few weeks.

The interesting thing about this schedule, though, is that it has made me far more aware of my 168 hours — even more so than during the weeks I was keeping a strict log for the book. Frankly, I’m aware of the minutes! I am aware of the minutes that Sam is eating, as I’m trying to make sure he’s getting a full meal. I’m aware of how long he goes between feedings. I am aware of what I can do during those 2-4 hour spurts when he is napping. Sleep? Blog? Play with Jasper? Exercise? Shower? Since I know I’m on a short leash, I am far more conscious of the decisions I make about these blocks of time. I’m trying to be focused, particularly when it comes to spending time with Jasper, who really needs a little TLC. If I’m playing with him, and I find myself looking at dirty dishes on the counter that need to be put away, I consciously tell myself to deal with them later and focus solely on my 2-year-old when I have the chance.

I’ve also started thinking of things I can do during feedings — i.e., activities that can be done seated, and which require only one hand. Suffice to say I’m reading more headlines online than I normally do!

Anyway, as they say with small children, the minutes are long but the years go by quickly. I maintain a very limited list of things that I need to do in any given day. When time is very limited, you have to focus on your core competencies. However, so far I’ve been encouraged that when I don’t try to put too much on the list, my little family of four has been doing all right.

(cross-posted at LauraVanderkam.com)

So it came out yesterday that Conde Nast, after a thorough review by McKinsey, will be shuttering a number of titles. As a magazine junkie, I’m still sore about the closing of Domino earlier this year. But I’m really steamed about the axe falling on Cookie, Conde Nast’s parenting title. Indeed, I’ve had to talk myself down from throwing the kind of temper tantrum that my 2-year-old pitches when you take away his toy cars.

This is not to say that Cookie was perfect. Like many titles, I almost always managed to get through it in an hour. I don’t view that as a positive in a magazine designed to give you something to…read.

But the concept was different and intriguing. This was going to be a “stylish” magazine for the “new mom.” More educated and with more disposable income than moms of a generation ago, she had a certain aesthetic sensibility. She owned the Bugaboo stroller, the Bloom high chair, and she had a thing for plain wooden toys or — if they must be branded — Melissa and Doug. She had a certain nostalgia for old-fashioned family activities like apple picking, but she was also up for the adventure of bringing her family to Austria, where she did not want to stay in chain hotels. She liked the idea of cooking dinner — foodie dinners at that — though she had to face the reality of limited time. After all, as part of being in a higher-income household, she most likely had a job. Not just a job. A profession. And so, it was taken for granted that she had interests beyond how often her children were pooping. If she wanted parenting tips, she wanted them in the form of essays written in prose that more closely resembled the New Yorker’s than the short how-tos in most parenting magazines. She wanted essays that acknowledged that men existed and often shared in the care of children.

In other words, this was a magazine so perfectly targeted at yours truly that I tended to read it first from my pile of glossies. Indeed, I liked the concept so much that I was personally offended when Cookie ran a cartoon insulting Sarah Palin (I sent a note reminding the editors that their core readership of married moms tended to vote Republican). As I said, the execution was not perfect. I wanted longer essays, longer stories that touched on parenting but recognized that parents are people, too. But Cookie at least came closer to that than the primary-color spattered pages of other parenting magazines. Like those snapshots of nostalgic moments of toddlers asleep or chasing fireflies Cookie tended to run on the back page, this magazine will be missed.