We switched to making pour-over coffee in a Chemex every morning, from our old method of using an automatic drip coffee machine. It’s easily one of the more hipster things we’ve done, but it was done for practical reasons too. The automatic machine was just a frustrating mess to deal with – it was a pain to clean, and it would frequently overflow. Plus, the coffee it made was just meh. But at least it was automatic.
The Chemex is a completely manual process. You’ve got to heat the water in a kettle. Preheat the glass coffeemaker. Grind and measure out the coffee just right. Pour the water over the grounds in stages, and wait for it to filter through.
On paper, it sure sounds like a lot more work.
But in practice, it’s not. It turns out the time it takes us to make morning coffee in the chemex versus the automatic machine (factoring in cleanup, setup, etc) is pretty similar. And that’s not even mentioning the quality differences.
Too often we make decisions in work and life based on how it looks on paper. Not how it works in the wild.
Are you working a certain way because it appears more efficient? Is it worth continuing, at the risk that you might be sacrificing quality as a result?