Pushing a shopping cart at the grocery store is the WORST, if you don’t have a grocery list that “makes sense”.

This is one of the first steps in creating a repeatable meal planning system and often something people don’t put much thought into.

Do you think a contractor builds a home without metal, concrete, or wood?

A grocery list is the building block to executing an efficient week of not worrying "what's for dinner".

It reduces your time at the store and increases your consistency through the week.

Now, let's dive in.

Most people hate spending their valuable weekend time at a grocery store (I know I do).

That's because they're doing it WRONG.

Back when I shopped for a couple hundred sailors, the other cooks and I would sit down to make a plan of attack. We’d figure out the groceries we needed based on the upcoming meals. Then execute with surgeon-like precision once we arrived.

You can do this on a smaller scale.

Write out your meals for the upcoming week.

Let's say you plan on making:

Now write out the ingredients for each meal and determine the amounts multiplied by the total meals you have planned.

Then categorize ALL the ingredients by Produce, Proteins, Dry Goods, Dairy, etc.

For any ingredients that have an overlap, total up the amount needed and only write that amount on the list (i.e. 2 separate recipes require an onion each…write 2 onions).

This exercise might be a pain at first, but I promise it gets easier with reps. I’d use this same framework with $200k worth of food inventory for a 6 month deployment.

Now when you go to the grocery store, you have a streamlined approach to shopping.

Depending on the layout of your store; you'll go to produce first, then to the protein section, then dry goods, then dairy, and onward to the cashier.

This is a systematic approach to grocery shopping that will save you HOURS a month.

Creating a meal plan means nothing without executing on the plan during the hectic work week.

Those long days of breakthroughs lead to zero mental capacity left for figuring out “what's for dinner”.

Or you just order pizza quick (which will disrupt your sleep and your gut).

You'll wake up groggy ready to make poor business decisions all day.

But if you flip the script and follow your meal plan, you'll be eating how you'd like and you won't waste time scrambling during meal time.

After a few weeks staying consistent you'll notice those good habits compound into running your business with more clarity and focus than before.

This grocery list framework will help you accomplish your entrepreneurial goals with less friction.

Go put this into action for the upcoming week and let me know how it goes.

Thanks for reading.

Steven

P.S. Feel free to reply to this email with any questions on improving your grocery shopping framework, I read every message.