Doing More the Night Before

I've discussed this topic before, but it's worth mentioning again. One of the main things that got me through the recent overtime season was an unflinching devotion to the principle of doing more the night before. This meant laying my clothes out before I went to sleep. It also meant taking care of oatmeal, as previously mentioned. Another thing that I took more seriously was getting the diaper washing completely done before going to bed. Since I didn't want to compromise going to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour, I made sure to start the diaper washing early in the evening.

One more thing: anything that I needed to take with me when I left in the morning was put in my lunch bag the night before. If I encountered an item that I knew I'd need to take, I put it in there immediately. This way, I didn't need to hunt things down in the morning. It also cut down on forgetting crucial items (like my access badge) when leaving the house.

One Improvement

One major improvement to my get-ready time has been to remove oatmeal cooking from the morning. I have four bowls to prepare for each morning, and here's the breakdown:

• My own oatmeal. I generally eat this cold. During this recent period of overtime, I would take the resealable bowl to work and eat the oatmeal there. Since it was cold anyway, I started cooking it the night before. That's about two extra minutes freed up in the morning.
• My son's oatmeal. My son recently turned one, and he eats oatmeal all day. I cook one bowl and he gets a portion of it at most meals. His oatmeal is generally cold by the time he eats it, so why not cook it early, too?
• My daughter's oatmeal. I don't cook this. My wife cooks it closer to breakfast time so it's warm. However, it is my duty to prep the bowl (put oatmeal and water in the bowl) and place it in the microwave. We've noticed no ill effect from letting this wet oatmeal stand in the closed microwave overnight.
• My wife's oatmeal. I don't cook this one, either, but there isn't room to let it sit in the microwave. So I pour the oatmeal in the evening and then put the water in before I leave in the morning.

This means that what used to be over five minutes in the morning has been reduced to less than thirty seconds in the morning. An internal element has been mostly converted to an external element. I previously didn't explore this possibility seriously; sleeping about four hours a night pressed the issue for me, though.

Peace!

Back...ish

All right, I've been buried at work, which means I've been working roughly 4:30am to 3:30pm for over five weeks. It's been crazy, but mostly good. This time has brought about some serious improvements in get-ready time (the overall process is complete in less than thirty minutes), and I'll post the routine changes in future days. Peace!

Motivational Monday - Don't Drop This

Okay, I had better not drop this.

I do think about this project often (daily, as a matter of fact), and a few developments have occurred since my last post. However, I'm rather pressed for time this morning due to snoozing, not preparing my breakfast yesterday, not folding diapers last night, etc. Sundays are difficult days, especially when we take the kids to evening service.

Not an excuse, just an opportunity to look a little more deeply at Sunday evenings. :-)

The Role of Hustle

So, Monday, I will attempt to see if I can, through a standardized sequence and a good deal of hustle, shorten the hair and scrubbing combined time from four minutes down to two. That is all.

On Falling off of Wagons

I said I couldn't guarantee that I'd post again until Tuesday; well, it's Thursday...so did I break my word? The argument could be made that I never actually guaranteed anything, just clarified what I couldn't guarantee...is anybody buying this? Is anybody reading this?

Some observations:

Cooking oatmeal takes 2 minutes. This is not negotiable at all. Perhaps cooking my oatmeal the night before won't be such a bad idea...

Shaving may not be the best first target for cutting down shower time. Maybe hair and scrubbing...

Taking clothes, hangers, book, etc. back to the bedroom after showering takes a bit of time, and I think it disturbs my wife. Maybe I can eliminate this step?

These are just some ideas I got this morning, thinking again about morning routine time reduction, and trying to get back on the wagon.

Shower Shaving II: The Retiming

Shaving in the shower takes 4 minutes, according to new information released June 20. Tulsa resident Justin Fuller stated, "I thought it wouldn't be longer than shaving at the sink." This revelation comes after a day of intense internal debate regarding the efficiency of shaving at the bathroom sink after the shower or in the shower during the shower. "Shaving at the sink also left me with some dried blood on my face that I didn't realize was there until I returned home in the evening. And I was in a three-hour meeting with a corporate vice-president! Shaving at the sink really let me down," Fuller said before returning to folding diapers.

In a related matter, vacation starts tomorrow. I can't guarantee I'll update this at all until Tuesday. Peace.

Surprising Results

I missed Tuesday. At this point, my readership is nothing more than automatic webcrawlers, so I think I have only offended myself.

Shaving at the sink? 4 minutes. That is very surprising to me. I'm going to measure my shaving time in the shower again tomorrow, and see if the time really is 5 minutes. I would not have expected that being able to see my face would cut the total shaving time, even with the additional time of wetting my face again, cleaning up the sink afterward, etc. I hope to report again tomorrow.

Motivation Monday?

Sorry I missed the post on Friday; I was operating on about four hours of sleep, combined with only four hours of sleep the previous night. But Father's Day weekend was awesome! My wife let me sleep nine hours, and she gave me a 24-hour period with no chores!

So, I'm a little refreshed, ready to hit this a bit harder.

But I keep finding myself unable to imagine that shaving at the sink will take less time than shaving in the shower...

One Thing at a Time

It's best not to change multiple things at once. I understand that there are some advanced "Design of Experiments" concepts that allow you to statistically attribute causes even when you change multiple things at once, but I'm a simple man.

Last night, I went grocery shopping. Then I came home, put away groceries, ate dinner, and helped clean the house in preparation for having some friends over for dinner tonight. I got to bed after midnight and got up before five am. BUT I STILL FOLDED AND PUT AWAY THE DIAPERS BEFORE I WENT TO BED. VICTORY.

What do those two paragraphs have to do with each other? Well, I bought new razor blades last night. For the first time in probably five years, I'm shaving with a new blade. If I started shaving at the sink this morning, too, how would I know which change to blame for any improvements? Also, my wife just put a lot of effort into cleaning the sink and I don't want to mess it up.

Tomorrow, though, I fully intend to shave at the sink. And, for the record, I noticed no real difference in the amount of time it took to shave with the new blade, but the process felt better and I think the shave is closer. VICTORY.

Imagination

All right, so I am resolved not to spend money on reducing time. Unless I know that I can spend the time creating income, I have to imagine that there is no net gain economically, only in time. Thus, there is no monetary savings from which to purchase supplies like Tilex.

So what am I to do? The cool kids at LEI with their Lean Thinking talk about how it's generally preferred to attempt to reduce costs without spending a dime. Fancy software? Rarely justified. New tooling? Only considered after Lean principles have been implemented as far as they can go. So, it's time to get imaginative.

Or formulaic. Either one works. Let's return to the SMED steps!

So, the first step was to identify elements of the shower routine I could eliminate. There are none; I need to do all of these. So now the idea is to identify internal and external elements, and see if any internal elements can become external ones.

Since all of the elements have to be done in the morning, it doesn't really matter in terms of my goals whether the elements are internal or external.

This leaves us with optimizing the steps that exist. The biggest target is shaving. I wonder if shaving at the sink will be faster than shaving in the shower. (It'll probably be more accurate and less bleedy.)

$3.15 Seems Astonishingly Low

I was thinking about the $3.15 an hour price tag and how this seems low to me. But then I started to figure that if it costs me $3.15 an hour, I would need to make $75.60 every day to keep my family going. For an eight hour workday, this would be $9.45 an hour, if I worked 7 days a week. For a 40-hour work week, I'd need to make $13.23 an hour. This works out to a little less than 28 kilodollars per year.

All of a sudden, $3.15 an hour seems a little high.

So, spending additional money, say, $7.50 every three months for Tilex, is just additional burden. It would raise the overall figure of $3.15 an hour by almost half a cent, and it wouldn't bring in additional income unless I come up with some task that will take up those two minutes and earn some money. Making money is not really what I intend to do with my morning.

Be it hereby resolved that I do not wish to spend an additional dime to accomplish the 10-minute morning routine. At least, I want to squeeze the routine for every last drop before I resort to spending money.

Motivation Monday! Time is Money!

So, the startling revelation that, if I save an hour of my time doing a task, I effectively make that task cost me $3.15 less (appropriating the cost of keeping my whole family alive for my tasks alone; I don't think there's a big problem with that approximation), gives me something to ponder. The whole concept seems to have a hole in it somewhere, which is exciting.

I'm the kind of guy that loves solving problems, mainly because it leads to understanding. Deming talked about "profound knowledge," and I think I'm a profound knowledge junkie. So, when I see a model that doesn't quite work, that means there's more knowledge to go and get. Exhilarating!

The part of the model that doesn't quite work is how to handle opportunity cost. I know, I presented that it was such a big breakthrough for me to determine the rough estimate of my time cost independent of my income. However, what else am I going to do with the time I save? That time still has the $3.15/hr price tag, but what if I generate income with that time, so that I have a net gain?

I think the model has to be on a task-by-task basis. If I know that a task will have a specific income attached to it, I can figure for that. I think this calls for a holistic schedule with price tags on it!

Thrilling. And I mean that. :-)

$3.15 an hour

Apparently, our cost of existence, for the whole family, is $3.15 an hour.

I figured this by taking all of our monthly expenses (not counting savings, tithe, etc.) and dividing them out over the month. $3.15 an hour is about 5.2 cents a minute. So, if I reduce a task by 2 minutes, it better not cost me more than 10.4 cents to do it. This means that a $7.50 bottle of Tilex would need to last over six months if it saves one minute per day, over three months if it saves two.

This is paradigm-shifting information. I need to think about this for a little while.

How much does a minute cost?

How can I evaluate the cost of a minute?

It's tempting to think of time in terms of how much money I could make if I were working with that time. I could divide out my salary over the course of my year and then know how much my time is worth if I spend it "productively." But that's not really accurate, in my opinion. If I free up a minute, I'm not really using that minute to earn a paycheck. What am I really doing?

I'm reducing the cost of the tasks I'm optimizing. Rather than think about how my income should change if I free up minutes, I should consider that I am paying money to keep myself alive. This amount is somewhat independent from income. I'm not saying that every minute I free up is now billable per my regular pay; I'm saying that each minute I'm alive costs me X dollars and that the task of, say, showering, now costs me less.

So, if I go to Tilex or some other spray to prevent soap scum and mildew, rather than use a squeegie and a towel, I need to quantify the costs of the task for either alternative. Time costs money. So does Tilex. So does infrequent squeegie replacement and regular towel-washing. Let's assume that the squeegie is replaced twice a year and that washing the towel costs nothing. How much does Tilex cost?

$7.50.

Tomorrow I'll try to figure out how much a minute costs, which should be useful for all kinds of things in the future.

Showering

Showering. It uses up a considerable amount of time each morning.



So there's your proof. 16 minutes out of 41 were spent on the "Showering" category. What are the elements that comprise a shower?

I don't want to get too...um...technical, but here's a quick breakdown of how my morning went, including shower details:



So, what's the first step? Eliminate unnecessary elements. I would challenge "washing the wall," which is a process involving squeegie-ing the tile walls, then wiping all of the walls with a towel. This is to prevent the buildup of soap scum and/or the development of mildew. The cost is 3 minutes a person a day. Is there a faster way? And, if so, is it worth it?

Snoozing, Reading, Folding, etc.

Well, I snoozed this morning, I read too long during bio-break, I left diapers to be folded this morning, and now it's time to go. At least I know what ate up my time!

What more can I do to get rid of the snoozing? It was ten minutes this morning!

Well, according to the Plan, I should prioritize it along with other elements. So, rather than spend time getting rid of it, I should spend time trimming down my #1 time-eater: the shower. I'll record again tomorrow and try to break down showering into smaller pieces. It's 'bout to get personal.

Better Make it Motivational Tuesday

It's been a rough week. All I can say is that if I get to bed by eleven post meridian, I'm doing well right now. We've been looking around for a minivan, and I've been going into work early to make up time I was going to be at the dentist, and I didn't take any of this into account for the morning routine.

I'll circle around and hit this effort again tomorrow.

Abnormalities

Yesterday, I left for work an hour early, so it was certainly nonstandard.

Today, I had a good conversation with my wife, but it ate up my blogging time! Plus, we were out past eleven, so the diapers weren't finished this morning.

But I think I found a way to interleave parallel operations (a SMED step) by doing some of my dressing during breakfast prep time (there are four minutes of microwaving that happen every morning). So that's good!

Motivation Monday - Memorial Day

Today's routine is no routine at all. Remember that your freedoms have been bought at a heavy price, and that they are currently maintained by men and women willing to sacrifice their lives to defend you. Warfare isn't about tactics, weapons, terrain, or chance; it's about what people do when called upon to stand and why they do it.

Maybe it makes their sacrifice a little more worthwhile if I find ways to waste less of my time.

Improve Elements

Have I mentioned that we are now in the Improve Elements phase of SMED? Breakfast prep, showering, dressing, these are things that really should be done in the morning for reasons I may never reveal. So now that we've finished changing internal elements to external ones, we need to improve the remaining internal ones.

The improvement to Bio-break that I mentioned yesterday yielded a five-minute improvement!





As you can see, I remembered to measure Showering and Dressing separately! Overall, this was a three-minute improvement over yesterday. If I keep that up, I should be below ten minutes in three weeks!

So, what's next? Showering is towering over the other elements. Can I speed up my shower? Next week's posts could get grosser.

Measurement

So, I timed the routine this morning. Here are the times I recorded:



As I was timing, I didn't realize that "Shower" and "Dress" were two different elements; I tend to think of them together. So, the two could probably be separated. With this in mind, I'll defer consideration on that one until tomorrow.

Ranking the elements in Pareto fashion gives this chart:



Now, that chart is oversimplified (no cumulative percent line, for instance), but it gets the point across. Throwing out Shower and Dress for the time being, Bio-Break is taking the most time.

Why?

Because I read. I'm currently reading B. H. Liddell-Hart's History of the Second World War, which is riveting, and the only time I really have to read it is, well, in the most private room of the house.

Why am I reading during this time?

No good reason, really; if I really want to read it, I could do so after the routine is completed. So, there's an improvement. I'll limit my reading at this point in the morning to when I've, um, concluded my business.

Prioritization

I've given some thought to a plan.

I think that I'm to the point now where I have a short list of elements from my morning routine. My main line of activity will be to continue the SMED process on these. However, up to this point, my approach within that structure has been rather haphazard. Of the remaining elements, I should prioritize based on how much savings I intend to gain from each element. This will require measurement and Pareto analysis, which I'll explain when I get there.

What about the items that just come up? Where do running out of oatmeal, not folding diapers, or having computer trouble fit in to this plan? Well, instead of being purely reactive, as has been the case recently, I think I should prioritize these also. If an emergent issue takes up time in my morning, it has become an element, whether I like it or not. Its time impact can be measured, and it can be prioritized just like the other elements.

In short, I want to form a list of mini-projects, and I want them prioritized. This way I am always attacking the biggest problem.

I need a strategy for measuring these elements, then. Once I have a prioritized list, I can start assigning deadlines, and that will be motivational!

Plan of Action

So far, my plan has been to follow the SMED rules until I get my morning routine to less than ten minutes. This has worked okay, until I found that I don't have sufficient infrastructure to maintain the improvements. This morning, I snoozed AND folded diapers. Additionally, I had an oatmeal mess to clean up and computer issues. It was a fiasco!

I need to ponder how to enforce improvements. Also, I need to form a plan that includes the SMED process as well as a method for dealing with unexpected problems.

Short on time this morning, but I'll be thinking.

Motivation Monday - SMART Goals

Is my goal of getting my morning routine to less than 10 minutes a S.M.A.R.T. goal?

Specific:
Is it clear what the goal is? Will I know when I've reached it? Without a clearly defined goal, it will be difficult to focus on achieving it, and success will be by chance.
-Yes, I think my goal is specific. If my morning routine takes longer than 10 minutes, I haven't reached the goal. I've also already limited my scope, stating that reading, writing, and praying don't count; they're the reason for shrinking down the rest of the morning.

Motivational:
Is the goal, for lack of a better term, exciting? Do I want to succeed at this goal? If there's no reward or no principle involved in forming the goal, it may be difficult to continue applying effort.
-Yes, I think my goal is motivational. I know that reducing my get-ready time will give me time to read and write like I want.

Achievable:
Is the goal formulated in such a way that a path to success is easy to see? Can I form a plan for attaining the goal?
-Hmm, I don't know if it is really easy to see the path to success the way the goal is formulated. However, it may just be due to lack of a plan. But that's more my fault, rather than the goal not being achievable.

Relevant:
Does it make sense to use resources to attain this goal? Does it warrant priority, and does it relate to my larger goals?
-Yes, as a lifelong disciple of Jesus Christ, I want to honor Him with my time. Part of that is making studying His word a priority in the morning. This goal is relevant.

Time-bound:
Does this goal have a deadline, or some temporal expectation?
-No, there is no deadline for any milestone in this project. This goal is currently not time-bound.

I think I need to make a plan and set some deadlines.

Progress Update

All right, last night we had a dinner guest -- and I still got the diapers done before I went to bed. That's tough to do, but the key was that I got the diapers started shortly upon my arrival home.

So, there have been some detours lately. First, the trimmed down morning schedule has been jeopardized by lack of discipline in the diaper arena. This means that what should look like this...



...really looks like this...



...but if I just start the diapers when I get home, this problem should disappear.

Of course, that's not all. Breakfast preparation has been taking longer sometimes due to unavailability of oatmeal. I think we may have that problem licked, so now it's time to start drilling into the shorter schedule and separate these few tasks into component elements. I'll focus on this next week.

Responsive List and Diaper Struggles

So, here's the pilot responsive list, as described in earlier posts:



The idea is that you take this in hand, walk to where the oatmeal is, and use a marker to cross out one item on the list for every item you see in the pantry. If there are three oatmeal containers, three of the five on the list would be crossed out. This would leave two to purchase, and I'd cross those out as I put them in the grocery cart. Simple, fast, and based on actual consumption, rather than an estimate of future consumption. If we end up eating more than five cartons in a month, I'll add an oatmeal carton to the list. Easy.

I had to fold diapers this morning. It was date night last night, but that's no excuse. I could have started the diapers before we left the house, but I didn't. As a result, the diapers were washed and dried, but they were not folded and put away. I really need to get more disciplined about starting the diapers as soon as I get home.

Diaper Rule Violation

So, my kung fu is strong, but I lack discipline.

I got home around 6:30 last night. It took half an hour to put away all of the groceries, so I didn't have dinner until after 7pm. THEN I started the diaper wash load. I prioritized preserving food and avoiding starvation over washing diapers on time, and it cost me a few minutes this morning. I could have stayed up later to get the diapers finished, but I also prioritized sleep.

This morning, I was able to set aside space for oatmeal in the pantry. My wife insists that we need a full month's supply of oatmeal on hand. This means FIVE cartons, which I feel is excessive inventory. However, I capitulate. Often, when implementing leaner inventory measures, the replenishment system needs to be in place before people are willing to lower inventory. Once they see the system working, it makes more sense. So, the next thing is to mark the area I've set aside, then make a pilot of the responsive list I've mentioned earlier.

All this talk about oatmeal is making me hungry.

New Rule

New Rule:

Diapers shall be put into the washer as soon as possible upon arriving home.

I did this yesterday (not for the first time) and it worked great (as it always does). A bit of a challenge will be today, when I arrive home quite late (it's grocery day (I'll also have to put away the groceries (and THEN I'll have to start the diapers -- I need to make sure I don't forget)))!

Motivation Monday - Excuses, Excuses

I'm off track!

I still have diapers to fold, and there's no oatmeal for me again! (This actually shows that my calculation of about a carton a week is accurate, looking at this blog's previous posts.)

It's tempting to say, "Well, I had a kidney stone on Friday, had to travel to see Mom on Saturday, and had church and a separate round of Mother's Day celebration for my wife. No wonder I'm off track!"

But you know the truth? If I'm setting all of this up correctly, it should be really easy to keep up with all of this morning stuff. I just haven't done enough yet to make it easy to do it right.

And it's not hard to get motivated to make things easy on yourself.

Sick Day

Sorry, I didn't forget to write a blog post, but several diverse biological functions combined today to keep me from doing much of anything productive. Don't worry, I'm not going to post a 5-Why about kidney stones.

At least, I won't promise that I will post one.

How Much Oatmeal?

My wife and I are ready to solve the oatmeal problem once and for all. We have experienced a few issues with purchasing before, so we want to prevent those from coming up here, also.

In the past, when we've purchased something like four cartons at once, it was difficult to find places for the oatmeal to inhabit. This led to placing oatmeal in odd parts of the pantry just because there was room. Then, when we tried to count how many cartons we had on hand, we didn't see all of it. We ended up buying too much trying to replace oatmeal we hadn't yet eaten. We'll try to avoid this whole mess through two measures (both of them very important in Lean).
1) Buy the smallest quantity necessary to guarantee availability of oatmeal. (This reduces Inventory-related waste.)
2) Mark a place large enough to store oatmeal that is off-limits to any other foodstuff. (This is, on a very small scale, 5S.)

Based on my calculations, one carton will last us 7.5 days, so a two weeks' supply is pretty close to two cartons. Therefore, each time we purchase, we should end up with two full cartons and possibly the remnant of a third that we haven't used up yet. So the area needs to be large enough for three oatmeal cartons. I think I'll use paper and scotch tape to mark the area this evening.

4 Whys?

Yesterday, I showed how I intend to implement the results of my 5-Why Analysis, but you may have noticed...there were only four levels of why.

The point of 5-Why is not to fill up a chart with exactly five layers of causes. I know, it has the word "five" in the title, but that's just a guideline. The point is to get you thinking deeply about the issue. Quality guru Deming pressed that in order to really solve a problem, you had to have "profound knowledge," something that goes deeper than what's immediately apparent. What we want from 5-Why Analysis is to drive below the surface symptoms to the single item that, once fixed, clears up the problem once and for all. As we showed yesterday, resolving the surface symptoms will not clear up my oatmeal problem. However, I believe that we arrived at the root cause in only four levels, so we stopped. Sometimes it may take six or seven levels. The point is that five is not a magic number.

So how about that responsive buying list? Well, I've talked it over with my wife, and she's on board (at least with oatmeal); but we foresee some issues that we can address as we implement the thing. Oatmeal will be our pilot program. I'll keep the updates coming!

Oatmeal, Revisited

Let's look again at the 5-Why Analysis from yesterday, and talk about implementing solutions.

Symptom: No Oatmeal for my breakfast. Response: Eat something else. I did this. I ate something else for breakfast. It was delicious.

Cause 1: No Oatmeal left in the pantry. Response: Buy some more oatmeal. I had to go to the grocery store anyway to get food for a special occasion (some friends had a baby recently, so we're bringing them dinner), so I bought oatmeal while I was there.

Cause 2: We didn't buy enough oatmeal at the last grocery run. Response: Increase the amount of oatmeal we purchase each grocery run. (But how much?)

Cause 3: We didn't measure our actual need before deciding how much oatmeal to buy. Response: How much oatmeal do we need? Given that we buy groceries once every two weeks, we need enough for four bowls a day for 14 days. A single carton provides 30 servings of half a cup each, so a carton lasts approximately 7.5 days. We need to make sure we have at least two cartons on hand as a result of each grocery trip.

Cause 4: We use a static buying list. Response: Make the list a little more dynamic. For staples, set a "comfort level" and subtract current inventory from it to determine purchase quantity.

But that's only 4 Whys, not 5 Whys!

I'll explain tomorrow.

Motivation Monday! - Root Cause Analysis

This morning went swimmingly, mainly because everything that was supposed to get done last night actually got done last night. I'm thrilled. However, I need to get out of here earlier, because we ran out of oatmeal and I need an alternative.

If success is a motivator, then I should probably be motivated to ensure success. One way to help gain successes (even small ones) is to tackle problems and eliminate their root causes. For instance, if I have a problem (e.g., I have no oatmeal for my breakfast), I might try to solve that problem by eating something else. That will get rid of the symptom, but only for a little while. I need to take my thoughts back from the symptom to its cause.

So why did I have no oatmeal for breakfast today? Because there was no oatmeal left in the pantry. Okay, if I go buy another carton of oatmeal, I'll solve the problem, right?

To a certain extent, yes, but overall, I will probably run out of oatmeal again. I've solved the cause, but the roots of the problem are still there. So why was there no oatmeal in the pantry?

Because we didn't buy enough. If I stop there and just make sure I buy a ton every time I'm at the grocery store, I could make it so I never run out of oatmeal again, but that introduces another problem: I'll have too much oatmeal and not enough space to store it (we live in a small house). The "solution" would not be the best, and I wouldn't get the full benefits of solving this problem for real. So, why did we not buy enough?

We didn't buy enough because we didn't measure our actual need to determine our oatmeal purchase. Now here is something we can sink our teeth into. We can definitely work on this, and guess what? If we work out a quick and easy way to fix our problem at this level, we'd be able to apply our lesson to other items in the pantry, and we gain much by this little exercise. But, why didn't we measure our actual need?

Because we have implemented a static buying list that we rarely, if ever, review. Now, there are four of us eating a bowl of oatmeal every day, not just three. Our consumption increased, but we never revisited how we decide our purchase quantities. Fixing this issue will help manage over- or under-purchasing for any consumable item in the house.

Should we implement just the last solution? No, I'd still be hungry until the next grocery store run in eight days. We need to implement the solutions at most (if not all) levels. But the power is that we get smarter about everything because we thought deeply about the oatmeal problem. This is why 5-Why Analysis (which we just performed) is so strongly pushed by its advocates.

Not only will I eat this morning, but I'll have oatmeal available every morning. We can get similar results with other problems. And that's motivating.

Another Roadbump

The challenges each morning seem a little different. This morning, the big time-eaters were two-fold. First, there's some stupid program on this computer that keeps showing ads on every website, and it slows things down greatly. It takes time to uninstall junk. Second, a lot of the evening food prep checklist was never completed. A big part of this was because the dishes weren't done until late in the evening, so the bibs, sippee cups, and bowls were not filled and placed, so I did that this morning.

I think I'll start using some 5-Why analysis next week to capture these emergent issues and bring them under control.

Less Backsliding

All right, getting back on track. I woke up at 5am this morning, got everything done in plenty of time to take care of some honey-do items before sitting down to fold clothes and read. It's exciting!

What's even more exciting is that my wife seems to be totally on board with taking care of morning preparations in the evening. I wrote that we already had an evening checklist; this was focused entirely on setting up the kitchen and the dining table so she could get the kids through breakfast and lunch (and, to some extent, dinner) with a minimal effort. Now that it's expanded a little, she's really enjoying the benefit of knowing much of the house is in order before she goes to sleep. She even thinks we should try to knock out all the preparation as early as possible! This is looking good for improving the number of hours I sleep a night, which has been a problem for a while.

The next step for me is to start following the chart I made to gather the next day's necessary items in the evening. Here's how I filled it out:



Now I need to post it somewhere where I'll see it.

More Backsliding

Monday night, I mowed the quarter-acre lawn.
Tuesday night, I did the grocery shopping, and my wife made baby food for the 8-month-old proto-man.

These activities took up tremendous amounts of time, and the morning preparations suffered as a result. Additionally, I left my three alarms set to wake me up at 5:30 instead of 5:00, so I robbed myself of possible recovery time yesterday morning, and there was no blog post. One more thing: I haven't been making it a point to start the diaper wash load as soon as I get home; that'll be a focus for the next day or so.

A few missteps, but it won't take much to get back on track.

And all that bragging I did on Monday, it sounds so arrogant now. "I guess this blog still has a purpose." It sounds high-pitched and nasally in my head right now. :-)

Motivation Monday!

I've heard that there's a misconception when it comes to working environments. There is definitely a correlation between high morale and productivity. The misconception is that high morale leads to high productivity, but it's really the other way around. When people are able to produce, to meet their goals, their morale increases. If their morale is high, but they can't meet their productivity goals, the morale will drop again. The effect of improvements in work environments is really on productivity (people are able to do more in a better environment), which then improves morale.

Why did I just go through all of that? Because I think it's good to see the improvement so far. Here's the original list of elements when this whole thing got started:



Here's the list now:



That's a big difference. How big? I used to set my alarm for 5am and barely have time for everything before 6:30 rolled around. I would leave late and get to work just before 7am. Today, I set my alarm for 5:30 because I stayed up really late last night, and I still had time to do what's on the second list AND write this blog post.

I'm still not down to less than ten minutes on all the required preparation, so I guess this blog still has a purpose. :-)

Next Day Items

I got the diapers completely done last night!

Here is my first attempt at a way to record what I should be getting the previous night to prepare for the next day.



I figure with this chart, my schedule can begin to look like this:



I'm excited!

Backsliding

I had hoped that today's post would be about a reminder checklist for items I intend to arrange in the evening for the next day rather than in the morning for the current day, but I feel that must wait.

I am still reaping many of the benefits of this SMED exercise, but last night, we ate out. It was the first time we had really gone to a sit-down restaurant for dinner in a long while. The effects on my list of elements were kind of devastating. AND the kids got to bed half an hour late (gasp!).

What happened? First, I did not complete the diaper-washing task last night. The diapers were washed and dried, but not folded, so I had to do that this morning. Also, my lunch, although made, was not packed. That is, I made the sandwich, but I hadn't put the sandwich in the lunch bag with the fruit and carrot. These items have both eaten away a considerable portion of my morning. I still have time to write this post, but the victory seems hollow. I shall be brainstorming solutions, but in the meantime, my morning has phantom elements in it:

Retrieve Items for the Day?

I think we're to the point where we need to talk for a while about what "Retrieve Items for the Day" means and why it might be a little involved.

Some days, I play games with guys at work. I'm typically the game-bringer, so I need to remember to get the game(s) before I leave the house. One day a week, the trash service comes and picks up our garbage. If it's a weekday, I need to make sure I have my ID badge. I hope it's clear that there is a varying list of items I need to make sure I have before I leave the house on a given morning.

I don't think it'll be a problem to move this task to the previous evening, except for one thing: I generally remember what I'm supposed to bring in a panicky state moments before I leave the house. I need to take some time and brainstorm a list of common items as a starting point. Then I can check the list each evening and set everything aside in an orderly, non-panicky state.

By the way, preparing lunch beforehand is working pretty well.

Here is the current list of elements:

Lunch Preparations

Another item that I think will move easily out of my morning and into the previous evening would be lunch-making. I hope the reader is not surprised to learn that we have a little checklist of evening activities, and that checklist already specifies lunch preparation for my wife and 2-year-old daughter. It is a simple matter to add my lunch to the list.

A note on diapers: I did everything but fold them last night, which left a little bit to do this morning, but not much. Overall, a big improvement, but I need to keep vigilance on my diligence or those diapers will creep back into the morning.

Motivation Monday!

The diaper shift has been a great success so far. This morning was special as far as work was concerned, and I had to be at work by four in the morning. I was able to get up at three to get to work by four (with a 25-minute commute). I didn't have a full Bible reading and prayer time, though, which brings me to today's topic.

Why am I doing this?

The truth about SMED is that the time savings at the changeover come from two places:
1) Getting rid of unnecessary steps. - This is something I can get behind, and it requires no explanation.
2) Moving the work somewhere else. - This is more interesting. When I move diaper washing to the evening, what am I really doing? I'm not getting rid of the diaper washing, I'm just shuffling it to a different part of my day. By doing this, I am saying that my morning time is more valuable than my evening time. It may "cost" me more to get the job done in the evening, but there's something about the morning that is more important.

What motivates me to clear out my morning? I want more time to read, write, and pray. It would be a dream to have an hour every morning for that. That's what drives the reduction of my morning changeover.

I'm about to ten minutes on this post. More improvement tomorrow!

Separate External Elements from Internal Ones

Well, the anti-snoozing measures seem to be working well! Snoozing was the only element I could readily throw in the trash. Now it's time for the next step: Separate External Elements from Internal Ones.

This means that I should examine the list and ask the question, "What could be done at another time?" What items must actually be done in the morning (internal elements), and which can be moved to, say, the previous evening (external elements)?

The first candidate that comes to mind is the diaper washing. We use cloth diapers for our 8-month old and 23-month old, and these need to be washed every day. Normally, I'd start the wash load right before going to bed. When I'd wake up the following morning, I'd move the diapers to the dryer, then get ready, then pull them out of the dryer and fold them.

Why not take care of the whole shebang earlier in the evening so I don't have to worry about it when I get up, saving me precious morning time?

Snoozing

I use the alarm on my phone to wake me up in the morning. It's REALLY EASY to just press a button on the phone and put off wakefulness for another five minutes. This snoozing seems to be entirely non-value-added. The initial alarm woke me up at least a little bit, diminishing the value of any "sleep" that may follow.

I think that this step can be completely eliminated. Here's how I intend to eliminate it:
Previously, I would set one alarm for five o'clock and then keep snoozing. Now, I'll set all three alarms one minute apart. The first will be at 4:58, the second at 4:59, and the third at 5:00. I think this will greatly improve my chances of getting up at the time I desire.

It worked this morning!

Elements

The first step, I suppose, would be to identify the elements of the morning routine. I think most of these can be subdivided, but here's the initial list:



The next step, I think, is to see which of these elements can be eliminated altogether.

Less than Ten Minutes

I want to do more in the morning! Right now, it takes quite a while to get up and get ready. This may not be a common problem, but it eats my breakfast, and I need to get a handle on it.

I've been learning Lean Six Sigma, and one thing has caught my attention: Single Minute Exchange of Dies, or SMED. You can read about it more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-Minute_Exchange_of_Die. The goal is to take a complex changeover process that uses a lot of time and rearrange it so that it takes less than ten minutes to complete.

Is it possible to use Lean tools to reduce a morning routine to the "single minute" range? Can I record the transformation in less than ten minutes per blog post?