I dont buy this, reading many of the comments here. I'm not a native speaker and not certain at this moment if the figure of "hamster wheel" exists in English. But "rat race" does, as well as "cog in the wheel".
There is a certain underlying trait of self-optimizing anything, also visible in the HN articles title itself (fortunately not so much the content) as well as in many other articles of this kind, coming up here continously. And these optimization considerations are >95% limited to time, they are much closer to self-exploitation than anything else.
Cooking for the moment aside, consider lunch. I'm German (sadly, the country became closer to the US in this respect). But if you ever worked in France or Switzerland for example (not to talk about countries even further into the South), you will spot much a difference here - yet in time spent, but also in the opinion what is important at all. Cooking is the same - it is not all "hungry family" (I certainly agree, at times it is), these are more often than not rationalizations. When I am cooking, the kitchen full of people is the most satisfying situation. It doesn't matter really, how long it lasts. This is not lost time, on the contrary! Also not in the context of work, because it eventually produces energy (I don't mean the calories) also for this.
A final small example: I have an Italian espresso machine here in my offices kitchen. Producing an espresso or cappuccino requires to do all steps manually: grinding beans, evaluating the pressure on the analog gauge, provisioning the milk, making foam from it, etc. - time-consuming! But it is a micro ritual, making my head free enough for handling some of the kinds of small problems, appearing during work. I could also buy something 'modern' using pads, maybe some sort of remote control, even a robot serving the final result to me (are there such things?). I certainly will never do this.
I will interject here—I’m one of the people who says that cooks who take 1 hour to cook a 20 minute recipe are slow. However, I don’t think that this is a problem of over-optimizing or self exploitation.
My wife and I both do a lot of cooking and it is a fun, shared activity where we can move fast or slow, and talk about things. We also spent some time learning—learning knife skills, learning new techniques for cooking, trying new cuisines or new recipes.
However, if you are chopping an onion and hold the knife wrong, hold the onion wrong, or make the wrong cuts, it is not only slower but it is also more dangerous. If your knife is dull, you push the knife harder, and that is more dangerous. If chopping an onion is safe, you can move faster. It is a simple skill to learn and everyone who cooks should learn it.
Lol, OK. I'm not worried about "wasted" time or "unproductive" time. I am sensitive to "young kids are hungry because dinner is an hour later than expected," or "we've got plans to visit grandparents and don't want to be out too late because they have school in the morning." Trying to pretend that there is never any time pressure in life is a bit naive, I think.
Cooking for the moment aside, consider lunch. I'm German (sadly, the country became closer to the US in this respect). But if you ever worked in France or Switzerland for example (not to talk about countries even further into the South), you will spot much a difference here - yet in time spent, but also in the opinion what is important at all. Cooking is the same - it is not all "hungry family" (I certainly agree, at times it is), these are more often than not rationalizations. When I am cooking, the kitchen full of people is the most satisfying situation. It doesn't matter really, how long it lasts. This is not lost time, on the contrary! Also not in the context of work, because it eventually produces energy (I don't mean the calories) also for this.
A final small example: I have an Italian espresso machine here in my offices kitchen. Producing an espresso or cappuccino requires to do all steps manually: grinding beans, evaluating the pressure on the analog gauge, provisioning the milk, making foam from it, etc. - time-consuming! But it is a micro ritual, making my head free enough for handling some of the kinds of small problems, appearing during work. I could also buy something 'modern' using pads, maybe some sort of remote control, even a robot serving the final result to me (are there such things?). I certainly will never do this.