Also, the general skill of reducing waste and streamlining is very valuable.
Finally, I think a cursory 80⁄20 pass on this is quite valuable for one’s personal life (most people waste a lot of unnecessary time each week that causes no utility or joy, and can be reclaimed surprisingly easily)… but the gains become even larger in complex organizations, especially business, but really all organizations. As organizations grow in size, the ratio of value-producing work to non-value producing tends to get much worse very quickly.
Working on an organizational level, it’s almost essential to study and reduce waste regularly and routine if you’re growing on any axis — number of customers, numbers of product/services, scope of mission, size of team, different types of software/hardware/tools deployed, etc, etc.
Of course, “100% value-producing work and true leisure” is a dream, it can’t never be finally reached. But I think it’s not a bad target to sketch out idealistically, but then only approach it pragmatically and balance the costs of waste-reduction against just doing whatever else appeals at the moment or makes sense.
The point about breaking even before you break even is super important and I think is often missed. If you can take X hours now to save X hours later, that’s break-even in hours, but by default it’s a huge win because some of the time you get back will be when time is of the essence.
Also, for the typical person into self-improvement, you can safely assume your time is going to to be substantially more valuable in the future than it is right now, so long as right now isn’t very leveraged for some reason.
Nice summary.
> Is there such a thing as “an acceptable level of waste”?
That xkcd chart, “How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you’re spending more time than you save,” is relevant. I’d even argue you can greatly exceed the amount of time “to break even” because you get back recurring wasteful time during the most busy week of your life — presumably that’s an important week — and can reduce waste through design during a week without much going on.
Also, the general skill of reducing waste and streamlining is very valuable.
Finally, I think a cursory 80⁄20 pass on this is quite valuable for one’s personal life (most people waste a lot of unnecessary time each week that causes no utility or joy, and can be reclaimed surprisingly easily)… but the gains become even larger in complex organizations, especially business, but really all organizations. As organizations grow in size, the ratio of value-producing work to non-value producing tends to get much worse very quickly.
Working on an organizational level, it’s almost essential to study and reduce waste regularly and routine if you’re growing on any axis — number of customers, numbers of product/services, scope of mission, size of team, different types of software/hardware/tools deployed, etc, etc.
Of course, “100% value-producing work and true leisure” is a dream, it can’t never be finally reached. But I think it’s not a bad target to sketch out idealistically, but then only approach it pragmatically and balance the costs of waste-reduction against just doing whatever else appeals at the moment or makes sense.
The point about breaking even before you break even is super important and I think is often missed. If you can take X hours now to save X hours later, that’s break-even in hours, but by default it’s a huge win because some of the time you get back will be when time is of the essence.
Firmly agreed.
Also, for the typical person into self-improvement, you can safely assume your time is going to to be substantially more valuable in the future than it is right now, so long as right now isn’t very leveraged for some reason.