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.
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