Hey all, we’ve almost survived another week! Go us! 
This week’s question is…
What is a real-world task that you always treat like it has a speedrun category?
For me, and maybe this is odd? but it’s gardening.
Most folk I’ve spoken with that enjoy a spot of gardening take it as a slow, relaxing activity - and don’t get me wrong, I really love it on a sunny day… but, my brain just goes into overdrive wanting maximum efficiency for some reason.
It always tends to be a rabbit-hole, and one task turns into ten. I’ve lost too many days this way!
I’ve ended up with an optimised lawnmower route, order of hedge-cutting, strimming, weeding, tidying etc.
Probably a good thing for me that Winter comes and it isn’t all-year round, aye 
I have ADHD and an extreme amount of impatience, so sometimes it feels like I try to rush through damn near everything. God forbid I learn to drive, there will be NO survivors.
Its kind of baked into me now after basic training sadly but… eating -.- you can tell a service-man by how fast they eat.
House/Yard/Gardening chores I treat like a WoW grind trying to get as much and all of it done when I’m in the area; then not wasting a motion if I’m heading somewhere I find something else that needs to be done or brought back…
I really beef with the time it takes to do laundry.
It’ll all get clean because thats time just spent waiting for the machine to do it’s thing and I’ll run the dryer for 30 seconds to undo any wrinkles if I forget to get the clothes at the end. But folding?
Folding gets speedran.
I used to have an issue where if something wasn’t folded nicely it would just stay that way but luckily doing things like using hangers with clips for pants and stuff feels like I’m “cheating” the system.
Likewise some things can just be rolled up instead of trying to find the perfect fold i.e. shorts, pajama bottoms. Just fold down the middle so the legs line up, set on the table and roll. It’s almost fun because it reminds me of kneading dough.
If the alternative is putting it off too long then having a cheat method with a good enough result is perfectly acceptable.
Ugh, I know! Why is everybody else so bad at eating?
I dunno dog shark, I’m 2 false springs into the year with the snow already melted and I just got a notification for a winter storm warning that could drop a fresh 16in/40cm of it this weekend
man i don’t even fold laundry lol
YES, i observe the pile method, sometimes I’ll hang when i feel spring clean-E
Mowing the lawn. I’ve been thinking about buying a lawnmower with rechargeable battery, as I feel I am using one hand to feed/pull electrical cable and one hand to push/pull mower.
Maybe go extreme and decimate entire garden into stone paving, no grass, never have to cut again.
Laundry I use 15 min speed mode. Dry clothes on clothes rack indoors, never outdoors as foxes keep attacking clothes for some reason. Well they like to sleep in my garden. Managed to sneak up to it and take photo.
Or cats having meetings in middle of the night. Captured on my CCTV.
I’ve gone that way decimated about half of backyard in many methods but turns out just need some clean cardboard, weed cloth, then gravel of choice and kills everything below.
Later if you want to replant certain plants the soil is amazing underneath. Riding lawn mowers are probably the easiest if it can be afforded… even more expensive are those new…AI self mowing lawn mowers 
…maybe one day… or just get rid of the HoA policies
I’m not military, but as a chef I guess I might be able to eat at the same speed, standing up or walking between events kitchen and restaurant kitchen. Maybe four - eight minutes to eat a meal that got plated wrong. My brother in law was a submariner for a while (UK) and he said there were times when chewing was something of a luxury.
As such I tend to wolf down my dinner. I have 3 sons with their respective girlfriends and the first time each of the girls joined us for a meal I think they were kind of startled how fast food got demolished.
My trick is to come up with systems to optimise or automate the boring stuff. The goal is to design a system during moments of clarity/productivity that can carry me the rest of the time when I’m less engaged.
Gamifies it in the short term and can magic the task away in the long term. Smart home tech and life hacks are like catnip for me.
My speedrun task is DIY. My father’s hobby was carpentry and DIY and I grew up helping him, which wasn’t that much fun for me. So I’m good with the tools and can build simple furniture or rewire plug sockets etc. I just do it quickly and clean up afterwards.