Watched pot never boils.

Stopped botching regular pasta once I got an oven with built-in timers.

I just cook on its average time (e.g. spaghetti cooking time is 6-8 minutes, I set it to 7, and I'm already readying the collander when gives the "one minute left" beep). It surely beats the watching and constant sampling, which results in soggy pasta half the time anyway.

Anything else I simply gave up. Stuff goes like this:

>slow cooking meat and veggies carefully placed like a potjiekos, opening the lid even once will ruin it and stirring it will burn your soul
>turn on the gas on its almost off position to give the lowest stable flames possible
>leave it for over one hour
>bro comes
>SUP BRO (opens lid) WHAT'S UP
>dad comes
>USE A HIGHER FLAME TO COOK FASTER
>one stirs, other tastes it
>"tastes like shit, what a waste of gas"
>regrets of not buying a good frying pan the other day

"Let me stress that again: heavyweight. A thin-bottomed saucepan is useless for anything. (…) A proper saute pan should cause serious head injury if brought down hard against someone's skull. If you have any doubts about which will dent--the victim's head or your pan--then throw that pan right in the trash."
– Anthony Bourdain