Lately I have noticed that the majority of my tasks are completed online. I pay bills, research projects, follow interesting developments on my favorite blogs, shop, look up reference information, and keep up with friends all through the computer. This has the advantages of reducing the amount of paper I must keep track of, limiting the number of books that I need to keep handy, and making my projects available from any location. The downside is that I end up tabbing through multiple sites to get to the applications and information that I really need. I am also easily distracted by shiny objects, which results in my following links that look interesting but are completely unrelated to what I am trying to get done. The list of sites that I was using on a daily basis included:
1. Hotmail
2. Twitter
3. Amazon
4. Triiibes
5. The Four Hour Work Week Blog
6. Litemind
7. Seth's Blog
8. US Bank
9. Google
10. Blogger Dashboard
11. JustPlainMoody
12. Facebook
13. Various Blog Statistics
14. CNN.com
15. The Springfield Newsleader
16. Fidelity.com
Opening all of these, even with the tab function of Firefox was very time consuming, and refreshing all of the tabs to keep things current only added to the total. A few weeks ago I discovered iGoogle and Google Reader. Together they have made a huge difference in my online activities. I now have collected all of the sites that I need into one page that opens quickly and has only what I need. In this lighter form, my daily tasks have been reduced so much that I sometimes feel that I am done too quickly. The best part about iGoogle is the buffet style selection of gadgets that can be displayed on your page. These gadgets are very easy to search through to find what you need and are extremely easy to add and subtract from your iGoogle page. I found myself searching through them and adding ten or so gadgets then trying them out and removing all of the time wasters of slow loaders. Now I can open one page and scroll through everything that I need look at in five minutes then move on to other important tasks. I highly recommend this tool for reducing wasted time.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Real Cost
Anything that you pay for has an advertised cost and a real cost. The real cost is often invisible due to marketing plans, or the difficulty of seeing cost versus usage. In this post I would like to discuss one of the real costs in my life and how they compare to the advertised cost.
Everyone has a cell phone these days. There are thousands of phones and an even greater array of calling and data plans. I am a very basic user when it comes to wireless services. I do not text, and I do not surf. Thus I need only calling minutes. The plan we decided to go with is a pay as you go $.075 per minute. This seems pretty good: 300 minutes for $20. When I began to investigate our actual usage and what we were being charged for I found that a majority of our calls were far short of a whole minute. We were however being charged in rounded up full minutes even for calls that ended exactly on a whole minute. See the data below.
In the first chart you can see that every call that was made resulted in an overcharge for minutes. This resulted in the real rate per minute being slightly higher than the advertised rate on average. On very short calls the real rate was extremely high.
The real cost of our cell phone service comes out as $.088 per minute (20% more than the advertised price)
Unfortunately unless you live in Peru (one of the only places I can find that charges by the second for airtime) you are stuck with the roundup policy. The only real result of this analysis for me is a new tendency to not call anyone if I am not sure of getting through. Also if I think the conversation will take less than one minute I send an e-mail instead. Overall I am now using fewer minutes, and spending less
Everyone has a cell phone these days. There are thousands of phones and an even greater array of calling and data plans. I am a very basic user when it comes to wireless services. I do not text, and I do not surf. Thus I need only calling minutes. The plan we decided to go with is a pay as you go $.075 per minute. This seems pretty good: 300 minutes for $20. When I began to investigate our actual usage and what we were being charged for I found that a majority of our calls were far short of a whole minute. We were however being charged in rounded up full minutes even for calls that ended exactly on a whole minute. See the data below.
In the first chart you can see that every call that was made resulted in an overcharge for minutes. This resulted in the real rate per minute being slightly higher than the advertised rate on average. On very short calls the real rate was extremely high.
The real cost of our cell phone service comes out as $.088 per minute (20% more than the advertised price)
Unfortunately unless you live in Peru (one of the only places I can find that charges by the second for airtime) you are stuck with the roundup policy. The only real result of this analysis for me is a new tendency to not call anyone if I am not sure of getting through. Also if I think the conversation will take less than one minute I send an e-mail instead. Overall I am now using fewer minutes, and spending less
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Paying Bills
I have already covered reducing time paying bills in another post (Family Values) and thought that I would share the next steps that I have taken. After a little research I discovered that the satellite and phone bill including internet can be set up for auto pay using a credit card. Sounds scary I know. By following up with setting the credit card bill to auto pay itself in full from our checking account each month, I can make sure everything is paid on time while at the same time earning rewards points that quickly add up to more purchasing power without me ever having to think about the bills. With paperless statements added in, I can let all of those companies digitally archive my statements and also avoid having to file them. Also it is very simple and fast to access them online at a planned date once per month to check for accuracy. We now have only three bills that require action each month and they are set up for bill pay. Total time now required is four minutes per month.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Lean Yardwork
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.
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.
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.
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