This statement is a bit absurd but strangely I've been living by it for quite some time. So far it has only made my early, but I think there's some merit to it.
Basically no matter where you're going, a journey of 30 minutes or less always takes about 30 minutes from the moment of its conception to arrival. Picture this, you're sitting at your desk, decide to visit a friend who lives 10 minutes away by car. What I'm claiming is that from the point of deciding to leave to getting to his house and creating the mentality of, "I am here" 30 minutes have elapsed. Now I know this isn't really true, but bear with me. What it really comes down to is the fact that it actually takes five minutes to do anything and since a journey can be subdivided into smaller journeys, each taking five minutes, six is usually a good number. Now thinking reasonably, you'd know that a thing can be done in less than five minutes but there's a strange mentality that leads us to bend and stretch quantities of real time into intervals of five minutes. Usually for convenience, and considering how TV programs are scheduled, taking 30 minutes to get anywhere is especially convenient.
Now what about intercontinental trips? Or long drives? etc.? Well the same logic holds. It will take 30 minutes to get to the airport, 30 to check in and get through security, 30 to wait to board, 30 to go from terminal to takeoff, 30 to fall asleep, land, find your bags, go through customs. But the real fact is that nothing actually takes 30 minutes, usually a little less, but there's a strange inherent fear of numbers that aren't multiples of five. And it's not just intervals of time, it's 48.3 degree angles (or measuring in radians for that matter), pennies, all the little things that are rounded and branded "insignificant". It's a flat out phobia of all things that would be expressed better in any other base but decimal. And slowly everything rounds up or down (usually up), until it takes half an hour to buy a toothbrush and five minutes to go from the kitchen to the basement.
So if you're still with me I have a solution. Plan everything around primes and multiples of odd numbers or odd powers of 2. Microwave your dinner for 73 seconds and set your alarm for 7:27. (Quick interesting note here: oddly many snooze buttons work on a 9 minute interval... how awesome.) Baby steps against losing time... if you keep them you might manage to squeeze an extra 2.83 minutes out of the 25 (or 24 if I've lost you) hour day. Because it doesn't really take 5 minutes to get the paper or 30 to walk to class but those rounded minutes and seconds add up... and compound annually.