Save time on the errand. Spend some of it wandering.

There is a familiar defense of inefficient errands: going out to buy a single envelope gets you into the world, where interesting things might happen.

Fine. But the envelope is not the valuable part.

Zvi’s suggestion is to separate the goals. Handle the boring transaction efficiently, then deliberately take the walk, seek a little novelty or leave room to think. You do not need to preserve an annoying process just to justify a break.

The reverse matters too. A slower route can be the better choice when it provides rest you would otherwise need anyway. Ten hurried minutes and twenty pleasant ones are not interchangeable units of lost productivity.

The mistake is assigning the restorative part a value of zero, then wondering why an aggressively optimized day feels worse.