There is almost never time to mow the yard and trim during the week. By the time I get home from work and eat dinner with the family, it is too late to mow the whole yard. My general method has been to spend two hours or more of the weekend getting my yard into step with the retirees around me. I hate losing that time. It always hangs over my head when I am planning for the weekend. This weekend I tried something different.
After some thinking about what takes so long in this process, I noticed that the mower bogging down during passes through the taller sections of the yard reduced my speed to 33% of my normal pace. By adjusting the height settings on the mower I was able to get an acceptable cut at my normal pace by sacrificing only 1/2 inch in cutting. The yard still looked good and I was able to cut the entire yard in half the time. Of course I may need to cut it more often if the rains keep up, but I do not think that I will get a sign in the yard for violating community statutes about yard maintenance.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
My List
In the last post, I discussed how to identify the things that you should target for waste elimination. Reflecting on my own life I developed the following list:
1. Mowing the yard
2. Paying bills
3. Dishes
4. Laundry
5. Groceries
6. Vehicle maintenance
7. Meal preparation
8. Trip preparation
9. Commute
10. House cleaning
11. Trash / Recycling
12. Workout
13. Morning routine
I have already worked on a few of these. It is time to get to work on the rest
1. Mowing the yard
2. Paying bills
3. Dishes
4. Laundry
5. Groceries
6. Vehicle maintenance
7. Meal preparation
8. Trip preparation
9. Commute
10. House cleaning
11. Trash / Recycling
12. Workout
13. Morning routine
I have already worked on a few of these. It is time to get to work on the rest
What Must be Done
As I have said before, applying the principles of waste reduction to your personal life is a little different than it is in business. Aside from being your own customer, there is another consideration. You do not need to save time in everything you do. There are some things that you want to spend your time doing. It is enjoyable. You do not want to take the waste out of these. The things that you want to cut to the bone are the tasks that you MUST do. Eliminating the waste from these gives you the freedom to blow all of the time that you want on hobbies, seeking out new things to improve, and just relaxing...if you want. The first step of understanding what to work on is defining the things that you must do, but do not enjoy.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
I guess I might as well....
I have talked about trying to avoid Paying for the Peaks but what do you do if you have already paid for something, and cannot get back the investment? I have been thinking about this scenario since reading Seth Godin's post about sunk costs.
One way you can use past mistakes to your advantage is to distribute what you need to do over your current capacity. If you already have dropped a lot of cash on double oven it serves no purpose to remove it and install only what you need for daily use. Instead you can use the current oven at a reduced capacity to take advantage of what you already have spent.
This may seem like common sense, but it really has a huge effect on how much of your time is taken to accomplish your required activities. If you have a sudden increase in demand for something, and you have already spent the money in the past, you can balance your need over the extra capacity and not have to work as hard to accomplish your goal.
I have seen a similar effect at work. When a products life is over and the production line cannot be used for anything else, we do not remove it until we need that space. It costs money to remove things. I saw the most extreme example of this in Japan. New space was needed inside a plant. The calculated how much would be required, then instead of destroying the old building, they cut out only what they needed and left the remaining building standing until more space was needed.
One way you can use past mistakes to your advantage is to distribute what you need to do over your current capacity. If you already have dropped a lot of cash on double oven it serves no purpose to remove it and install only what you need for daily use. Instead you can use the current oven at a reduced capacity to take advantage of what you already have spent.
This may seem like common sense, but it really has a huge effect on how much of your time is taken to accomplish your required activities. If you have a sudden increase in demand for something, and you have already spent the money in the past, you can balance your need over the extra capacity and not have to work as hard to accomplish your goal.
I have seen a similar effect at work. When a products life is over and the production line cannot be used for anything else, we do not remove it until we need that space. It costs money to remove things. I saw the most extreme example of this in Japan. New space was needed inside a plant. The calculated how much would be required, then instead of destroying the old building, they cut out only what they needed and left the remaining building standing until more space was needed.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Marking Time
As I have discussed before in Setting Good Targets you have to measure what you want to improve. In this post Gina Trapani gives you a great tool to measure the balance in your life. I really like the way she refers to comparing the ideal to the actual to show the way to improvement.
Kaizen
I found this article today regarding the principles of kaizen (improvement). It is nice to see that I am not alone in my fight to eliminate waste. While I agree with a lot of what the article says, it focuses more on lean thinking that the true philosophy of the Toyota Production System. You cannot address ony muda (waste) without reduction of muri (overburden) and mura (unevenness).
Sunday, May 10, 2009
I'm Not That Old Yet
I kind of swiped this idea from a speech that I heard at work, but I liked it and it fits. My family tries to be healthy. Eli has vitamins, Crystal is pregnant and has prenatal vitamins, and I have abused my body and need glucosamine and fish oil to keep things from creaking when I move. On top of that are the regular daily supplements to make up for the things that I don't eat enough of. This makes for a mess in the cabinet, and consequently it gets hidden away. Sometimes we forget, because there is no visual cue to remind us to open the cabinet and take our vitamins. In the midst of the kitchen reorganization from the previous post I also took some measures to ensure that we all get the vitamins we need every day.
I really hate those little daily pill counters. Not only would using one make me feel much older than I am, but it takes a lot of time to count out all of those doses for the week. I had to find another solution.
Basically I found a tray that holds all of our various vitamins and put it in the cabinet with the breakfast cereal and coffee. When I take out the breakfast stuff I put the tray on the counter so it is visible. I take everything off of the tray and as I open each bottle and take out the vitamins, I replace the bottle on the tray. When the tray is full again, we have everything that we require for the day and I can put the tray back in the cabinet. Simple and effective.
I really hate those little daily pill counters. Not only would using one make me feel much older than I am, but it takes a lot of time to count out all of those doses for the week. I had to find another solution.
Basically I found a tray that holds all of our various vitamins and put it in the cabinet with the breakfast cereal and coffee. When I take out the breakfast stuff I put the tray on the counter so it is visible. I take everything off of the tray and as I open each bottle and take out the vitamins, I replace the bottle on the tray. When the tray is full again, we have everything that we require for the day and I can put the tray back in the cabinet. Simple and effective.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Morning Routine
Lately I have been trying to gain more free time to spend with Eli and Crystal. Also I would like to be able to take Mattie for a walk in the mornings before work. We have a lot going on in the mornings and I thought that I would try to improve the process a little without affecting the rest of our lives. Here is the current morning routine and the organization of our cabinets.
The circles represent activities:
As you can see there is a lot of walking around involved. Here are pictures of the cabinets with the items they contain.
After a little thought, a few false starts and a lot of reorganization I ended up with this:
I have to use this for a little bit before I can tell you the time savings, but just from looking at the walking and the space saved in the cabinets the improvement is obvious.
Savings:
Before walking distance = 84.75 feet
After walking distance = 45 feet
Total saved distance = 39.75 feet
The circles represent activities:
As you can see there is a lot of walking around involved. Here are pictures of the cabinets with the items they contain.
After a little thought, a few false starts and a lot of reorganization I ended up with this:
I have to use this for a little bit before I can tell you the time savings, but just from looking at the walking and the space saved in the cabinets the improvement is obvious.Savings:
Before walking distance = 84.75 feet
After walking distance = 45 feet
Total saved distance = 39.75 feet
Changing Gears
I originally intended this site to be about how to save money by eliminating waste. Today I realized that I was being shortsighted. Eliminating costs is a great thing, but identifying waste and removing it from your life has benefits far beyond money matters. I would like to help you free up more time, create more freedom for you to do the things that you want to do, and have the things that you require to enjoy a fulfilling life. Vacations, spending time with family and friends and just taking time to do something that you love all by yourself are not wasteful activities. My purpose is to help you reduce the time and money demands that prevent you from being able to do these things. With this in mind I want to begin a series of posts that will show how the time required to do all of those things you must do can be minimized so you have more time to do the things that you want to do.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Getting to the Root of Your Problems
In the previous post I discussed how to break down your overall goals to get to specific problems and set simple measurable targets. This is not usually the end of the fight however. Most of the time you must go deeper to find the root cause of the issue. A root cause is like the thorn in your finger that got infected, caused you to have swelling, a fever, and a headache. You could take aspirin to alleviate all of your symptoms, but the thorn is still in there and as soon as you stop taking your daily dose everything will come crashing back on you immediately. If you dig the splinter out, it may hurt terribly for a short time, but soon the swelling goes down and everything heals up. You can hide the aspirin bottle back in the medicine cabinet and go on with life.
Let's return to the previous example. You now know that you dessert habits and your Sunday morning appetite are causing you to balloon. You might just say "OK I need to stop", and leave it at that. But then dinner is wrapping up on Saturday night and you convince yourself to have just one bite of your wife's cheese cake. On Sunday you get home from church and the whole family wants to head to your normal buffet breakfast. You go along, telling yourself that you will stick to the fruit bar. Soon you have decided that you need to get your money's worth and that you will start your Sunday dieting next weekend.
With some further investigation however you might find that you generally are full after your Saturday entree, but your wife (all 120 pounds of her) does not feel like a dinner is complete without dessert, and you have fallen into the habit of ordering something yourself, just to avoid sitting there twiddling your thumbs.
On Sunday you discover that you have a snack when you get up, but then starve yourself all through Sunday School and the service. Not only does this cause your metabolism to slow down, but you are so starved by the time you get to the buffet that you overrun the finish line of your meal all of the way into indigestion. Now you have two specific root causes to address.
If you order your wife's desert early, you might still have some food to get through as she downs her sweet treat, and if you pack a few snacks to sneak into the gap between Sunday School and the main service at church you might not overeat quite as much at the buffet.
By getting at these root causes you can help solve the specific problems without having to rely on sheer will power.
Let's return to the previous example. You now know that you dessert habits and your Sunday morning appetite are causing you to balloon. You might just say "OK I need to stop", and leave it at that. But then dinner is wrapping up on Saturday night and you convince yourself to have just one bite of your wife's cheese cake. On Sunday you get home from church and the whole family wants to head to your normal buffet breakfast. You go along, telling yourself that you will stick to the fruit bar. Soon you have decided that you need to get your money's worth and that you will start your Sunday dieting next weekend.
With some further investigation however you might find that you generally are full after your Saturday entree, but your wife (all 120 pounds of her) does not feel like a dinner is complete without dessert, and you have fallen into the habit of ordering something yourself, just to avoid sitting there twiddling your thumbs.
On Sunday you discover that you have a snack when you get up, but then starve yourself all through Sunday School and the service. Not only does this cause your metabolism to slow down, but you are so starved by the time you get to the buffet that you overrun the finish line of your meal all of the way into indigestion. Now you have two specific root causes to address.
If you order your wife's desert early, you might still have some food to get through as she downs her sweet treat, and if you pack a few snacks to sneak into the gap between Sunday School and the main service at church you might not overeat quite as much at the buffet.
By getting at these root causes you can help solve the specific problems without having to rely on sheer will power.
Setting Good Targets
People make resolutions every year as soon as their hangover wears off. They will lose more weight, stick to a budget, pay off their credit cards...the list goes on. On reason most of these goals are never accomplished is they are plucked from the air with no thought. As such they are often too ambitious and not very measurable. As anyone who has ever tried to break a bad habit will tell you, going cold turkey is very hard. The key to setting targets that you can actually achieve lies in understanding what the problem really is and what specific things you should attack to get closer to your goal.
Lets look at everyone's favorite problem. You have eaten your way into the next pants size and now you are ready to get back to your high school wrestling weight. Of course you should change your diet and exercise right? But what does that really mean?
First you have to define a gap between the current reality and where you would like to be. Let's say you are 200 pounds, and you would like to get back to your college playing weight of 180. Good you have a gap, twenty pounds. That is the easy part.
Next you have to break down that gap to understand what makes up that extra. The best way to understand this is to as yourself the questions who, what when, where and how much.
All of these questions require a little investigation and understanding the facts. For example, if you begin tracking your weight twice a day every day, you may find that on Sunday night you always hit your highest weight of the week.
This answers the when question, and tells you that you need to look closer to what you are eating during the weekend. By looking at the nutritional information from what you consume during one weekend, you might find the desert on Saturday night followed by the breakfast buffet on Sunday morning account for 70% of the calories that you consume during the weekend. In fact you might find that Cheese cake with chocolate sauce pancakes, bacon, hash browns, cinnamon rolls, and a muffin add up to roughly 4000 calories. This is great! Did I lose you? You have answered the what question. You have to avoid these two things.
OK there are 3500 calories in one pound of body fat. This means if you keep everything else constant and cut out the dessert and the breakfast buffet and replace it with something that only contains 500 calories, you should be able to lose one pound per week. I am greatly simplifying things for the sake of example, but the logic holds true. This also allows you to set a time line for yourself.
Thus your target becomes By cutting out Cheesecake and Shoney's and continuing everything else I am doing I will lose 20 pounds in the next 20 weeks.
Now you have a specific activity that you can easily track to meet your overall goal.
By defining your overall goals then breaking them down into specific sub-catagories you can get to the specific problems that are plaguing you and decide where to begin the fight.
Lets look at everyone's favorite problem. You have eaten your way into the next pants size and now you are ready to get back to your high school wrestling weight. Of course you should change your diet and exercise right? But what does that really mean?
First you have to define a gap between the current reality and where you would like to be. Let's say you are 200 pounds, and you would like to get back to your college playing weight of 180. Good you have a gap, twenty pounds. That is the easy part.
Next you have to break down that gap to understand what makes up that extra. The best way to understand this is to as yourself the questions who, what when, where and how much.
All of these questions require a little investigation and understanding the facts. For example, if you begin tracking your weight twice a day every day, you may find that on Sunday night you always hit your highest weight of the week.
This answers the when question, and tells you that you need to look closer to what you are eating during the weekend. By looking at the nutritional information from what you consume during one weekend, you might find the desert on Saturday night followed by the breakfast buffet on Sunday morning account for 70% of the calories that you consume during the weekend. In fact you might find that Cheese cake with chocolate sauce pancakes, bacon, hash browns, cinnamon rolls, and a muffin add up to roughly 4000 calories. This is great! Did I lose you? You have answered the what question. You have to avoid these two things.
OK there are 3500 calories in one pound of body fat. This means if you keep everything else constant and cut out the dessert and the breakfast buffet and replace it with something that only contains 500 calories, you should be able to lose one pound per week. I am greatly simplifying things for the sake of example, but the logic holds true. This also allows you to set a time line for yourself.
Thus your target becomes By cutting out Cheesecake and Shoney's and continuing everything else I am doing I will lose 20 pounds in the next 20 weeks.
Now you have a specific activity that you can easily track to meet your overall goal.
By defining your overall goals then breaking them down into specific sub-catagories you can get to the specific problems that are plaguing you and decide where to begin the fight.
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