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.)