There’s No Such Thing As A 30-Minute Meal

I’m not bashing Rachael Ray. I adore her smile and her goofy giggle and her story. I especially enjoy watching her 30-Minute Meal episodes from way back…and then watching her more polished movements and monologue in the newer shows.

But even Rachael will tell ya she only cooked the meal in 30 minutes. There’s some prep ahead of time, and some ingredients are bought prepped. It’s cool to watch her pull out the cookware as she gabs, but all the dishes are clean before she starts. And while they almost always show the plating, they never show the clean up.

What happens before and after Rachael cooks isn’t included in that half hour, but all those other steps are essential for that tiny window of time to go as smoothly as it does.

So yah, we can make a meal in 30 minutes, but before we start cooking we need time for—

• Creating the evening’s menu
• Finding and selecting recipes
• Making the grocery list
• Driving/walking/riding to the grocery store
• Shopping and standing in line to checkout
• Loading the car
• Driving/walking/riding back
• Unloading the car
• Unpacking the groceries and stashing the bags
• Loading the fridge and pantry, and
• Celebrating our full fridge for the blessing that it is

And after the meal is cooked, blessed, and eaten, we need even more time for—

• Collecting the dishes from both eating and cooking
• Tidying and wiping down our eating space
• Packing up leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch and/or dinner
• Washing the dishes and/or loading the dishwasher
• Tidying and wiping down the kitchen
• Soaking in a hot bath and sipping cocoa, and
• Celebrating our full belly for the blessing that it is. And our hot clean, water and the cocoa, too.

See what I mean? There’s all this stuff to do before and plenty more stuff to do after.

Now, of course…

All those things don’t happen around each meal. We buy for more than one meal at a time to consolidate much of that pre-cooking work (unless we’re going European). Also, we can delegate all or some of the other bits to spouses, kids, partners, and extraordinarily clever pets.

But all those small tasks surrounding our 30-minute meal need to get done somehow by someone. And while some steps may take just a minute or two, the accumulation of steps can absorb most of an evening.

And that’s why it’s so important to accurately assess the befores and afters that flank the work we do and delegate.

And this applies to everything.

Not just most things. Everything.

What if we’re making the transition from cubicle employee to self-employed and working from home? What about when we decide to offer services with our products? Or products with our services?

Before we go from here to there, before we create this or build that,
there’s a preface and an epilogue.
And they both take time.

This applies to everything.

It applies to creating products

No, this isn’t another harrumph about how my shopping cart comparison Guide still isn’t finished. I’ve made peace with that, and it’s moving along nicely.

But it is a reminder for folks who read things like Dave Navarro’s short, sweet, sensible instruction on how to write an ebook in a weekend. We already know we can do a lot in a couple of days—remember What Could You Create in a Weekend?—and Dave outlines a straightforward process for getting it done.

The preface for writing an ebook, of course, is getting the knowledge you’re going to write about. How long did it take you to acquire the expertise you’ll finesse into your 15-25 pages of brilliance? Your ebook may only take 4 hours to write, but it may have been 20 years in the making.

Sidenote: That’s something to think about as we price our ebooks, too. Not the 4 hours we spent writing it, but the years of experience that came before that, plus the value our customers will get from it afterwards.

As for the epilogue, if you already know how to create PDFs and are familiar with e-junkie’s shopping cart, things will work out along Dave’s timeline.

But.

If you’re new to PDFs and carts and such, it’s gonna take a little longer to pull things together.

And if you want to add your touch, reach more people, and sell more stuff, then the epilogue extends long past the short post that concluded the weekend. You may want to customize the email receipts and download page, set up and/or manage the affiliate program, continue to talk, tweet, and write about it, gather reviews and testimonials, update the sales page, and on and on.

So for ebooks, like many other products, years of education and experience came before the work, and weeks or months of marketing, writing, and promotion come after. And if you need to learn new things along the way, you’ll need even more time.

And it applies to services, too…

I’m way grateful for a husband who sees the big picture. And irons his own shirts.

We talked over my product research services last week, and the sussing out eventually came around to time and money. That’s where he found a flaw in my plan: I underestimated my time. By a lot.

When he listed my process for me, the preface for client-specific online research means—

• Having an initial chat with the client about what they’re looking for
• Locating dependable products & services
• Signing up for and testing online services based on the client’s expected use
• Reading and taking notes on service features, prices, FAQs and Terms of Service,
• Taking screenshots for my archive and the write-up
• Contacting technical and/or sales support with client-specific questions and concerns not addressed by the website content
• Gathering user feedback and experiences via Twitter, and
• Weighing and comparing all that to come to a recommendation

My epilogue is comparatively brief: writing it up and shipping it out and checking in to make sure everything’s groovy. But even if I start with an idea of what I would recommend, there’s the hours of work, education, and experience that come way before, right before, and shortly after.

So. How About You?

What tasks do you factor in for before and after the work that you do? Ever underestimate how long a task/job/project/gig would take because you didn’t account for the preface and the epilogue? Lemme know down below…

Photo credit: 46137