This summer The Times started a new column called Smarter Living, with advice on everything from how to pick a college major to how to breathe. These kinds of tips about ways to navigate daily experiences better and more efficiently are also sometimes called “ life hacks.”
A recent Times article in this category is “How to Pick the Fastest Line at the Supermarket.” In it, Christopher Mele advises:
Get behind a shopper who has a full cart
That may seem counterintuitive, but data tell a different story, said Dan Meyer, a former high school math teacher who is the chief academic officer at Desmos, where he explores the future of math, technology and learning.
“Every person requires a fixed amount of time to say hello, pay, say goodbye and clear out of the lane,” he said in an email. His research found all of that takes an average of 41 seconds per person and items to be rung up take about three seconds each.
That means getting in line with numerous people who have fewer things can be a poor choice.
Think of it this way: One person with 100 items to be rung up will take an average of almost six minutes to process. If you get in a line with four people who each have 20 items, it will take an average of nearly seven minutes.
Those minutes add up. Richard Larson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is considered the foremost expert on queues, estimated that Americans spend 37 billion hours a year waiting in lines.
Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …
— Would you follow this advice? Why or why not? What tips do you have for beating lines?
— What are your favorite life hacks? Where or how did you learn them?
— What other “smarter living” topics should The Times take on? Why?
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