The Full Dishwasher Effect: Why We Don’t Save Time (Part I)

This is the first part in a series we’re doing on the common reasons people don’t save time when they are capable of doing so.

You get home after a long day and throw some dinner together. By the time you finish your meal, it’s pretty late. All you feel like doing is sinking into the couch with a good book or show or heading to bed. But you know you should clean up the kitchen rather than leaving it for the next morning and risking an ant invasion.

You harness the willpower to get up and throw everything in the dishwasher: pots, pans, food remnants, everything. But as you open the dishwasher, you realize your plan for a quick exit isn’t going to be possible: the dishwasher is full.

Now you’re faced with a decision: empty the dishwasher and pick up your plan where you were forced to stop it… or just wash the dishes by hand.

This decision is the same decision we are each faced with at work a hundred times over every day. It’s the choice between investing a little bit more now for long-term time-savings or taking the shortcut that is actually a “long-cut.”

How is washing the dishes by hand a long-cut even though it feels like a shortcut? Handwashing dishes in this scenario feels like a shortcut because we get to skip the time it would take to empty the dishwasher. However, it’s a long-cut because washing a dish takes longer than putting it in the dishwasher — and we’re going to spend the time to empty the dishwasher eventually, so we don’t save any time by not doing it now.

In short, we take small short-term savings in exchange for an overall loss of time.

How does the full dishwasher effect happen at work?

You find yourself using your mouse to frequently switch between open windows on your computer and you think to yourself: “I’m sure there is a keyboard shortcut that could do what I’m currently find frustrating to do with my mouse.” But the problem is: figuring out what that shortcut is would take time. You would need to “empty the dishwasher.”

Here’s the thing: learning that shortcut (ALT+TAB for PCs and CMD+TAB for Macs) saves you 5 minutes every day you use it for the rest of your career — or 2 days per year. It might take you 10 minutes to find the shortcut on Google. Spend 10 minutes now, save 2 working days per year. Empty the dishwasher.

The full dishwasher effect doesn’t just show its deceptive head in the simple area of keyboard shortcuts either:

• You’re handwashing dishes when you write that new task on a post-it rather than adding it to your to-do list
• You’re handwashing dishes when you skip explaining to your direct report why you made changes to her work
• You’re handwashing dishes when you fight to refocus after being distracted by an email notification rather than taking a few minutes to figure out how to turn them off
• You’re handwashing dishes when you leave an email in your inbox after reading it through rather than filing it

Every day, there are hundreds of decision points, during which we get to choose whether we’ll empty the dishwasher or handwash the dishes.

The Full Dishwasher Effect is Nothing New

The trouble is that even the smallest short-term cost can lead us to skip an action that will clearly benefit us. For example, investment company Vanguard found that at companies with voluntary enrollment, only 59% of employees participated in 401(k) plans, but at companies with automatic enrollment (i.e., employees must opt out), 86% did. Opt-out programs also have led organ donation rates in many European countries to be 25–30% higher than rates in countries with opt-in programs.

We don’t like to empty the dishwasher, even if the emptying the dishwasher only involves checking a box on a form.

Overcoming the Full Dishwasher Effect

If we want to overcome the ‘Full Dishwasher Effect,’ we must recognize that we are what researchers call “dynamically inconsistent.” Dynamic inconsistency means that we show a tendency to select a vice (short-term gain, long-term cost) over a virtue (short-term cost, long-term gain) as the moment of experience approaches. For example, when given the choice between a fruit and junk food, half of people choose the fruit when the decision is made a week before they get to eat one. However, when asked again immediately before consumption, 30% of people change their minds, such that 80% select the junk food over the fruit.

Researchers have found the same effect in movie selection. When people choose a movie to watch on a future date, they are more likely to select ‘high-brow’ movies (e.g., documentaries, movies with depressing plots or subtitles), but when they choose on viewing day, they are more likely to select ‘low-brow’ movies (e.g., comedies, light action films).

What does all this mean for saving time? The chance of you deciding to empty the dishwasher when you finish dinner is somewhat low. But, if you can empty the dishwasher at a different time, then all you’ll have to do is load the dishwasher with dirty dishes.

Here’s how you do this:

Every time you recognize a full dishwasher moment, make note of it in your note-taking app. Then schedule 15–30 minutes every 1–2 weeks to review your list and empty the dishwashers. During those 15–30 minutes, you’ll learn new shortcuts, send emails to team members explaining why you made changes to their work, set up automatic filtering rules for your inbox, re-organize your email folders, and put into action many other research-backed, time-saving practices.

As you see the benefit of emptying the dishwasher, the likelihood that you’ll empty the dishwasher in the moment of decision will increase. You can boost this likelihood even more by beginning to think of yourself as someone who empties the dishwasher. Soon you may not need your weekly or bi-weekly time blocks to catch up on the time-savings you missed that week. You’ll be making the time-saving decisions in the moment.

Taking Steps to Save Time

Time-savings are within reach of all of us, but more often than not we miss them because we choose the shortcut that is actually a long-cut. Feeling ready to identify some full dishwasher moments? Take the Time-Finder today and understand where you can save the most time.

This is the first part in a series we’re doing on the common reasons people don’t save time when they are capable of doing so. Here are the upcoming posts in this series:

• Unicorn Syndrome: When thinking we’re unique wastes us time
• Tech-Alone Fallacy: Why we look to changes in technology — not changes to our behaviors — to save us time
• Why Small is Big: How we miss out on savings by looking for a big win
• Diet vs. Lifestyle: How the search for ‘quick wins’ holds us back from true savings