“Even the pros get this one way wrong.”
Have you hit the ceiling with your own personal production or income? Are you ignoring your friends, not walking the dog and skipping meals just so you can get more work done? If so, this post and the next in the series are for you.
Writers can only write so many words in their allotted time, and a bricklayer can only lay so many bricks, right? So, how does one continue to make even more money and achieve one’s dreams no matter how lofty?
The unhealthy solution we’re always taught is just to work more hours. Be the first one to get to the office and be the last one to leave, right?
No way. I would never write a post for Ye Olde Readers that said, “Don’t have the money you want? Simple, just work harder and longer and all your dreams will come true.” How many millions of cubicle rats are never going to be financially independent, or even comfortable? Most of them.
The time/money combination, I am happy to say, is BS.
The beauty about what you’re going to read here is that it will work for you regardless of how much time you actually have for work. If your ideal scene is to spend 30 minutes a day working, this advice will work for you as well as for the guy who loves to work 16 hour days.
The idea isn’t how much time spend at work, but how much time you actually spend doing real work. And that brings us to the first reason you’re not getting as much done as you could:
There’s too much waste, and it’s minimizing your full capacity.
There’s too much waste, and it’s minimizing your full capacity.
I could tell you all about waste and what it means, but I’m going to tell you a story instead. It’s a true story about a recent consulting gig I got completely by accident. It’s the story of a multi-millionaire, a professional who “knew all about” his business and how it could just not get any bigger. This story will illustrate beyond a doubt that wasted time, wasted motion and wasted space all add up to wasted money.
A real-life example of waste disguising your capabilities
Recently, I was talking to a gentleman in a coffee shop (great way to pick up clients). After the social niceties had ended he complained to me that his company was “maxed out.” He said, “Things are great but they’re also stagnant. We just need more hours in the day to take it up a notch.” He said something that seems all too common nowadays, “I hate turning away paying clients because I don’t have time for them.”
We talked some more and he told me about his business which manufactures circuit boards that go in phones and calculators and such. I told him I’d help him out.
Because I’m sort of a young guy he gave me that look we young guys get. You know the one. The slight squint as they check your shoes to see if they’re expensive, and wonder why you’re a bit stubbly and in a coffee shop in the middle of the work day. With a baseball cap on. That look.
He summed me up a bit more and when he’d finished I looked him in the eye (another great way to get clients by the way) and said, “Seriously. I’ll come check it out.”
The gentlemen said, sort of snidely, “Oh…so you know about electronics and such?”
I said, “Not a thing.”
He shook his head and said, “Sorry, but if you don’t know electronics what can you do for an electronics company?”
He made like he was going to leave and I said, “Electronics aren’t your problem.” He sat back down. “You said your profits and efficiencies are maxed out. They wouldn’t be if you made a lousy product that nobody wanted, so that’s not the issue. You have a business problem, not an electronics problem.”
I’m sure he still didn’t trust me, but I said “efficiencies” so he didn’t know quite what to make of me. That’s one of those $5 words that carries about $20 worth of connotations with it. When in doubt, just say “efficiencies” and you’ll probably get a raise or a new client.
He said, “Alright, so what can you do for me?”
I said, “I have no idea.”
He sort of slumped in his chair, and I said, “Dude, I have to see it first. You’re expecting some text book solution, but there’s no such thing. Plus I haven’t read any of ‘em. I’ll come check out your operation in person, I’ll look at your assembly area, it’ll take me a half hour and I’ll give you an analysis. If you like it, you can pay me for it and then I’ll look at the rest of the company if you want. If not, I’ll be out of your hair.”
A little more chit chat and he finally agreed, probably mostly because he was curious about where this circus act would end up. I made an appointment with him, turns out his name was Burt, and two days later I’m in the manufacturing area of his shop.
I couldn’t believe what I saw. Burt wasn’t kidding. I mean the place was just gorgeous. Mirror-like finish on the floors, not a scrap of paper anywhere and all the equipment was glistening like it was coated with Vaseline.
So I’m standing alone on the stairs that lead up to Burt’s office, and I’m looking down at the whole procedure in awe. I see a problem.
Without getting too technical, there were a bunch of machines for manufacturing Burt’s circuit boards. The machines were fully automated except for the very last step. Here someone with rubber gloves, a face mask and a doctor’s smock would carefully pack the boards into a plastic bin, carry them over to the next machine, unpack them and put them in.
To this day I have no idea what those machines were doing. But I do know that carefully packing bins full of parts, only to walk a dozen yards and have to unpack them again, is a complete waste of time. Why not just turn one piece of equipment so that it begins where the other one ends?
I went to talk to Burt.
“You were right,” I said. “You are maxed out.” He didn’t look too surprised that the stranger from the coffee shop hadn’t discovered the Holy Grail sitting under one of his machines. “But you’re maxed out because your shop is inefficient. Come check this out; I want to show you something.”
Burt and I went and stood on the same stairs I’d been standing on earlier. The shop was running at full roar and I asked Burt what he saw. He looked around and shrugged. “Nothing really. Just another day. This is what we do. Runs like this all day, you know.”
Luckily, one of the bin-packer-walking-doctor-people was loading up a bin. I said to Burt, “What’s that guy there doing?”
I’m sure Burt thought I was an idiot for asking. He said, “He’s packing up a bin.”
“Oh…and now what’s he doing?”
“Well, that’s the next machine over there, with the green light on the side. That’s where he’s headed with those parts.”
“Oh, okay, that explains that. And now what’s he doing?”
“Putting the parts in the next machine, obviously.”
I looked at Burt. Burt looked at me. Burt still didn’t get it.
I said, “What would happen if, say just for giggles, you brought that second machine over there closer to this one over here? Maybe even aligned them end to end?”
“Well,” Burt started, “that would…”
Burt got it. He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked back at the production floor and I could see he was reorganizing it in his head, the same way I had.
“You know,” he said, “we could probably do that with all the machines in here.”
“Imagine that,” I said. “Probably be good for production flow.”
He said, “Yeah. And you know how many broken parts and customer returns we get from all that manhandling? A lot. We’ve been focused on trying to find a safer way to pack them from machine to machine. Better bins, foam…we even had shopping carts in here at one point.”
Burt was floored by the whole thing and asked me to continue looking around. I was not surprised to find more glaringly obvious reasons why the factory was “maxed out.” Things like an antiquated time-card system that ate up about a 1/2 hour per employee every 2 weeks. Burt ended up replacing it with a fairly expensive but lightning fast piece of payroll software. It paid for itself the first month from increased production.
Don’t forget to look around
I think Burt had missed these things because he “knew” how the factory ought to run. Instead of just looking around at the actual function of every action, he assumed all that motion on the factory floor meant busy-ness and therefore good business.
Because his employees were in motion all day, he figured they couldn’t fit in more motion.
What about you?
Are you wasting motion? Examine your work area, your writing process, your email activities. If you’re a designer, do you write the same code over and over for each job? Do you email clients or potential clients with nearly identical messages? Do write and rewrite invoices for each separate job?
I could ask you a million questions here, but the point is to look. Look at what you do every day and find out where you could trim out the fat. I’ll have a proper handy checklist up here in the very near future, against which you can compare your own person life and business. Subscribe and stay tuned for that.
Now, what if you find that you actually don’t waste time? What if you actually are running at full capacity? Well, that’s the subject of the next post and you won’t want to miss it!
Subscribe now and you won’t!
Comments
-
- How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 7: Advertise Yourself
- How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 6: Don’t Settle For Average
- How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 5: Double Your Ad Income With Upsells
- How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 4: Quantity vs. Quality
- How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 3: Don’t Stray Too Far
- How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 2: Annoyance Factor
- How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 1: Quality Control
-
- A Human's Guide to Freelance Living - FREE New Ebook!
- Life Myths #1 - Do what you love and the money will follow
- How to take criticism like a champ. Or not at all.
- How to Make Your Writing More Visually Appealing
- The job interview that never was
- How to put together a portfolio when you’ve never had clients
- Two Things I Depend on For Freelance Commissions
10 comments
Thanks for the story and a good read. I should start reflecting on my own work process.
Today, I am going to sit down with a business consultant and pay him $50 an hour to listen to my “efficiencies” and tell me where I’m going wrong, because every freakin’ minute of my day, from 5am to 10pm, is maxed out.
I know this. But I can’t see where the problem is. I’m too close to it. All I can see is motion and lack of results. I can’t see which machines need to be moved or where to put them.
Honestly? I should have had someone come look at my shop from the start and built my production line properly to get the most out of my day.
That’s definitely something for new people getting into business to think about…
Winnie -
Thanks for coming by! I’m glad you liked the post. Part 2 is coming up soon, as is a checklist for uncovering areas of waste, so come back soon!
James -
The line in your comment: “All I can see is motion and lack of results” is a really honest thing to say, man. That sort of honesty will definitely lead to a solution.
When I read that, I immediately wanted to ask you these questions in this order:
I don’t really know your process, product, etc., so don’t think I’m trying to sell you some half-baked solution. But you’ve already started to look honestly at what you do. If you continue to do so, I’m sure you’ll see some things to fix.
Or just go around meeting strangers and saying things like “efficiencies” and “cohesion of processes” and everything will be fine.
@ Charlie - Hm. Good questions and I’m going to have to think on good answers. I could rattle something off but that wouldn’t be helpful, so I’m going to ponder and give you an honest answer.
And yes - I tend to be rather honest and I’m not afraid of admitting mistakes, faults or weaknesses. I think that being able to be honest helps find solutions and moves towards self-improvement.
Plus, I love psychology, so I find these kinds of things *interesting*. Even when I’m the victim of my own examinations and observations. It imrpoves the cohesion of processes.
1. Efficient, smooth functioning that doesn’t always depend on me, my brain or my intervention. I’m trying to accomplish cutting down on too much information scattered about in the hopes of compensating for systems that don’t handle everything in one. In short, I work too much - really - and think that I could work less with a more effective process. Or a bigger brain. Or ADD meds. Your choice.
2. It’s more like, which of the actions shouldn’t I perform that will lead to accomplishment? I need to stop spreading out and centralize.
3. See two.
Like I said to the consultant today: There seems to be an awful lot more managing going on than there needs to be.
His reply? “This is very common with entrepreneurs, because you people think very differently. If a client asked you to do something, what would you answer?”
“Well, if I didn’t know how, I’d think about it and see if I could do it. If I did know how, I’d say… Sure, I can do that.”
“That’s your problem,” he answered. “I’ll see you next week.”
[...] Part 1, Waste we talked about how wasted time and actions (same thing, really) make it appear that you just [...]
Mmm … I love the sweet taste of systems analysis. I did the same thing for a printing operation a few years ago and couldn’t believe how many common-sense things they could do to boost their efficiency.
I guess it always helps having someone step in without “blinders” on to give the needed advice.
Ayup. We writers call this being “too close to your own work”.
James & Dave -
It’s really incredible how many big things people miss just due to numbness to their surroundings. I know a bunch of designers who don’t use hot-key shortcuts in their software like Photoshop and such.
I asked one of them why he didn’t and he said the shortcuts were too hard to remember. I told him to try as it would more than double his production and he rattled off the cliche about him being an old dog who couldn’t learn new tricks.
I wanted to say, “Dude, it’s not a trick. It’s the alphabet.”
I wanted to say, “Dude, it’s not a trick. It’s the alphabet.”
Holy CTRL-S, that’s rich …
Leave a Comment