Yes, there are some shortcuts in life, especially in the kitchen! Building a tasty, real-food meal can be done quickly and painlessly if you have ingredients ready to go.
Start with prepped foods and ready-to-eat store-bought ingredients, like precooked chicken sausage and prewashed greens. Try batch-cooking some proteins, a sauce/dressing or two, veggies, and other slow carbs. Yes, you will need to do a little bit of prep earlier in the week, but the minimal time you spend prepping will save you hours of time throughout the week. You save yourself the time of starting from scratch every meal. It also reduces the time you spend just *thinking* about “what’s for dinner?”, “what’s for lunch?”. Instead, you can use your time to think about more fun things like coffee, chocolate, and weekends.