By Sanjay Saigal

It's dinnertime.

You plan to grill steaks for yourself, spouse, and kid. Each steak takes 15 minutes per side. Your grill has space for two steaks at a time. How long until the three of you can sit down to dinner together?

The obvious answer is an hour. First, you grill two of the steaks. At 15 minutes per side, that takes half an hour. Then you grill the third steak. Another 30 minutes. In all, an hour.

Can you do better?

Sure you can.

Start as you did before, by grilling two steaks simultaneously. But this time, after 15 minutes, do something different: flip one steak (let's call it steak #1), set the other steak aside on a plate, and put steak #3 on the grill. After another 15 minutes, steak #1 is done, plate it. Flip steak #3 and grill that along with steak #2 (uncooked side down). In 15 minutes, all three steaks are done. Total turnaround time? 45 minutes. A 25% improvement over the obvious solution.

Now, there are no tricks involved. The first procedure, which takes an hour, has the following steps:

Steak1.side1 & Steak2.side1

...cook 15 minutes...

Steak1.side2 & Steak2.side2

...cook 15 minutes...

Steak3.side1

...cook 15 minutes...

Steak3.side2

...cook 15 minutes...