8 Productivity Hacks For Busy Dad Cooks

You’re probably reading this because you’re like me.

You’ve got a demanding tech job, you’re a father, husband, friend, and constantly torn in different directions.

You want to cook for your family, but who has the time? Am I right?

This is exactly how I felt when Little Branzino was born. How could I possibly balance all these responsibilities and still cook?

After staring at a fridge full of takeout boxes and feeling the sting in my wallet, I decided to apply some productivity hacks from my tech job to cooking.

These tips will give you the confidence to cook and still be there for your family.

Here are 8 productivity tactics (in no particular order):

For me, the most important things are my health and ensuring my family has delicious food. That means I wake up early (4-5am), exercise, hydrate, and start prepping for dinner. It could be as simple as making a marinade or taking out meat to thaw.

Your priorities are shown through your actions.

There’s a great piece by Paul Graham that talks about manager vs maker schedules.

Cooking every day is tough with so many demands on our time. I batch cook on dedicated days, freeing up the rest of the week to enjoy family time.

Constraints will set you free!

Knowing how to program your cooking is the difference between an newbie and a pro.

For me, I like to use themes per day so I don’t have to think about what we’re eating that day.

I use daily themes to simplify meal planning:

• Sunday - Batch cook

• Monday - Salad Bowl

• Tuesday - “Tacos”

• Wednesday - One-pot/pan

• Thursday - Leftovers

• Friday - Eat out

• Saturday - Special meal

There’s a great book from the folks at Amazon that build and ship products by working backwards with the end in mind.

To make cooking more efficient, visualize the end result first. For me, that means setting the table first.

Work backwards will calm you down in the kitchen.

I use the LNO framework from, Shreyas Doshi, to figure out how to prioritize my cooking.

• L = Leveraged tasks

• N = Neutral tasks

• O = Overhead tasks

Start on the leveraged tasks first and then neutral then overhead. In the kitchen, this means:

• Start boiling the pot of water

• Turn the oven

• Prep you proteins first, then carbs then veggies

In product development, people obsess over what tools to use for managing projects. The tool doesn’t matter as much as clear communication and regular check-ins.

For cooking, I use pen and paper and sometimes Apple Notes to plan meals.

The tools won’t make you an effective cook.

In product, we use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure how likely someone is to recommend your product.

After every meal, I ask the Branzino family on a scale from 1-10 how likely they would want me to make this again. I call this the Net Cooking Score.

Feedback loops are important to improve your craft

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are very popular to measure progress across a company.

Every quarter, set a cooking goal. It could be reducing sugar, exploring a cuisine, or mastering a technique like baking or braising. Focus on one thing at a time – you have decades of meals to enjoy and new things to try.

That’s it for now.

Let me know what productivity tips you enjoyed most by hitting reply.

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Whenever you’re ready:

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