Everyone gets too busy. They pile up their tasks, responsibilities and often over-promise while struggling to maintain any kind of work life balance. It's a hectic lifestyle that many lead and while I've written some articles on how to
simplify your life and mind to get around this, there are other ways to help address this problem with the work and tasks you face.
I learned a key principle while going through a training course for work and while reading
Lean Thinking. The idea is to identify and eliminate waste. This can apply not only in a production environment like the book is targeted for, but in life in general. There is so much going on around us every day we need to really strive to find and eliminate the waste that consumes our valuable time in life.
Finding Waste When I first read the book, I didn't connect the dots. Most people understand that creating waste in a production environment results in lost resources and money. However, as my thinking expanded outside of work, I saw areas of waste in everything. Some of the areas I quickly identified are:
- Repetitive communication in multiple formats
- Entry of data or documents in multiple locations/formats
- Dependencies between people waiting for each other
- Tools that make development slower or difficult
- The workplace environment with policies / procedures that exist but are not always useful
- Rework to fix problems caused internally
- Rewrites of software due to unexpected changes
- Failed attempts to solve a problem
The list could carry on for a long time in nearly everything we do. Anyone can find waste in life and there is always room for eliminating some of it. I've learned a couple of areas that drastically help with finding and identifying the waste we each experience.
Time Analysis 
One of the best ways I know to find waste is to spend a week recording your actions in 15 minute intervals. I learned this technique from Peter Drucker in his timeless masterpiece
The Effective Executive in a process he calls the Drucker analysis. You basically capture all your actions on a notepad for an entire week in 15 minute intervals. At the end of the week, you categorize your time spent and look at the overall time spent in each of those categories. Doing this will reveal a lot of time spent on things that don't really have any lasting impact or importance to you or others around you. Those are the areas of waste!
Ask Others Another technique is to ask others what they think you spend most of your time on. Generally the impression you give others has some foundation so someone else's opinion on what you spend your time on is going to be fairly accurate. It may not be what you want them to see or believe, but it likely has merit from normal observation. Again, you can then classify this feedback into groups (if you ask multiple people) and collectively review all the things you spend your time on to see the areas that you consider to be waste.
Review Your Goals and Passions Look next at your goals and passions in life. What are all the things that are holding you back from those? Everything that holds you back from what is important is potentially waste. For some people, critical thinking comes naturally so it's often a lot easier to explore the areas that are getting in the way of the important things in life and work. Create a list of 10-20 things that get in the way of your goals and passions and look at which of those you'd consider waste. It's quite likely that most of them are.
What is YOUR Life Waste Anyway? The stuff you desire, dream for and long for are the areas you wish to experience more of. Maybe these are your adventures, travels, sports, family, friends, work, hobbies, etc. It's different for each person of course and the important items in your life are the things that are often the hardest to find time to do. All that stuff that gets in the way is waste. It can seem that daily activities are endless and that most people really don't want to be doing them. All these are waste:
- Driving to/from work
- Paying bills
- Doing dishes and cleaning the house
- Mowing the lawn and other yard work
- Preparing meals and shopping / buying living essentials
Most people would agree with those areas that they don't have any real lasting value. More debatable areas of waste are often in our pastimes:
- Watching TV
- Surfing the web
- Sleeping more than we need
- Line ups and delays for simple things like coffee and lunch
- Work
These are not considered waste for everybody but there is definitely some waste here, it just varies from person to person about how they feel about those activities.
All the other things in life that you HAVE to do may be areas of waste as well. Do they support some other activity that you want to do and spend more time at? Work perhaps? What about your lifestyle and how you manage your time to commute and look after your groceries and bills? All that is wasteful and is worth adding to your list so you can look to eliminate it next!
I was inspired to expand on this topic and build this list because of a
post by Andrew Bolis from Personal Hack who wrote that the biggest productivity tip is elimination . My list however, looks specifically at the physical time factor and tasks undertaken in life that are wasteful. Here's my list:
10 Ways to Eliminate Waste In order to eliminate waste there are many options, some simple, some drastic. Here are a 10 areas you could easily use to eliminate waste in your life.
- Don't be so Patient!
Patience is definitely a virtue and it is something that most people who know me would say I have little of. The advantage of that however is that I don't have the patience to wait around for things. I see it as a huge waste and is an area I've learned to eliminate. I avoid line ups at all costs. I don't wait in lines for simple pleasures like a drink or lunch. I'm not a coffee drinker but I see everyday hundreds of people waiting in line at coffee shops just wasting their time! I grocery shop late in the evening when things are not as busy and lines are shorter. I go to the bank or go shopping when places first open so I can get in and out fast without having to wait in line. If you have less patience with day to day things it is easy to find places to eliminate waste.
- Just stop doing it!
If you have the desire, motivation and will power, you may be able to simply stop doing things you consider waste. The article that is linked covers a bit more of the how to actually do this. If you can simply decide to stop something, it is the easiest way to eliminate waste from your life. Oh, and the quickest!
- Make Wasteful Activities More Difficult to Do
You intend to kill (waste) 30 minutes watching TV but instead, you get drawn in and it turns into 2 hours. To prevent this, you can purposefully make a wasteful activity more difficult to do.
For example, if you want to spend less time watching TV, you can put the remote in the garage for a month, or put a wall timer on the TV that automatically shuts it off every night at a certain hour. Even unplugging the TV so you have to find the cord and plug it in to use it will help you reduce the time spend in that activity since you can't as easily do the activity mindlessly. Move your couch so it doesn't face the TV, put a barricade in place that must be moved to watch or perhaps you might want to simply get rid of one or more televisions. If you have to share one or use it only in one place that is less convenient, so you won't waste nearly as much time with it.
This tip works for any activity that requires some object or physical device. Pushing the 'power' button on the remote is too simple, make it tough.
- Be more efficient
Unfortunately there are many tasks we don't want to do, but we still have to. If that's the case, we should look to be more efficient at them so they don't waste as much time. If you do a bunch of things at once, don't prioritize your tasks or just have a huge list of things to do, you will be switching back and forth which always add some waste. Learn to prioritize tasks and find ways to be more efficient with them and you can get done those wasteful tasks quicker. Look to find efficiencies in all your tasks.
- Focus on Finishing with Your Waste
The last thing you want is to recycle your waste. Don't take on tasks and activities that are wasteful without following through and finishing them. Finish them so they are out of the way for good. If you deal with some of it, put it off and then have to revisit it, you start all over and things take more and more time to complete. Put your mind to finish with your waste and look forward to then having time made for the things you want to do.
- Double Up
Even though I just listed in #5 to have focus, there are often times where your mind is on autopilot and you can easily multitask. For example, while doing house work or exercising, you could easily listen to music or audio books if those are things you enjoy and it allows you to turn time spent from be wasted to something you actually value. You can listen to audio books while driving or exercising instead of having to do that time separately and you will find even MORE time for the things you love.
- Reduce Your Travel Time
A drastic change here would be to buy a house closer to work or change jobs so you are close to home. There are other ways to either reduce your travel time or maximize that time for other things. You could car pool or use public transit so you can multitask on your commute to work with other tasks. You could change your working hours so that traveling while traffic is light enables you to commute in less time.
- Take time to spiritually reflect on your life
It's amazing how just a few minutes each day in prayer, meditation, or spiritual study can impact your ability to focus on what matters in life. The time spent doing this won't eliminate any other areas directly (unless it simply replaces them) but it will definitely give you more peace of mind and relaxation that will greatly assist you in simplifying your life and eliminating the things that are not that meaningful to you. If no time is spent thinking about your purpose and life goals, you will have a hard time identifying what is and isn't waste. Commit some time to reflect on your life and use that to eliminate the areas that don't fit your purpose.
- Find Someone else to Handle Your Waste
You might have put a lot of your waste items in a must do category feeling that they are necessary even though you don't want to do them and would label them as waste. Well, the good news is that for what you consider waste, there is often someone out there would doesn't think that or might even value what you don't want to do. This is especially true with service jobs such as yard work. You don't have to do them yourself and there are companies and individuals who would welcome the work to take care of it for you. This is an easy way (even though it will often cost some money) to eliminate waste.
- Say NO!
The most lasting way to eliminate waste is to learn to say no. Say no to buying new stuff you don't need, say no to tasks you don't want to do, say no to your habits that kill your time! Practice saying no to things you are comfortable eliminating and work to expand that no to other areas. If you can say no to anything that complicates and adds waste in your life, you can keep time available on the things that matter to you and to keep eliminating waste you already have. You certainly don't need to eliminate one area of waste and just replace it with a new one. You must be able to say NO when its wasteful to you.
So, those are the things I find work best to eliminate waste. What are yours? I'd love to hear if these work for you or if you have your own tools to eliminate waste. I hope this gives you a way to look for the things you can stop doing, can say no to and I encourage you to help others learn to eliminate waste as well.
译文:
10种简单化和消除你生活中的浪费的方法
每个人都变得很忙碌了。他们将各种工作任务与职责交织在一起，并且当他们努力保持任何一种工作生活平衡的时候，经常一次次地许下诺言。这是一个由好多原因造成的紧张的生活方式，而且在我已经写好的一些关于如何简化你的生活你的生活与思想的文章中,提及到有其他的几种方法可以解决你所面对的工作与任务所带来的问题.
在经历了因为工作而参加的培训课程和读了《倾斜思想》本书后，我意识到了一个关键原理。l这种思想是为也鉴定并消除浪费的.这不但能应用到生产环境，就像这个本书的所阐述的目标一样，而且也可以应用到日常生活中。每天在我们身边都有很好需要我们真正努力去找出并消除那些消耗我们生活中宝贵时间的浪费。
找出浪费
当我开始读这本书的时候，我当时并没有留意这些细微的地方。大多数人认为，在生产环境中造成的浪费，将会导致很多资源与金钱的丧失。但是，随着我在工作之余的思考范围的扩大，我发现好多地方都在浪费着每一样东西。我马上将其中的一些地方鉴定为：
以多样化的方式重复沟通；
以多样化的区域或方式记取数据或文件；
相互独立的人们之间互相等待着对方；
促进发展的工作运行缓慢或操作困难；
工作场所的环境政策/程序虽然存在，但是并没有任何作用的；
为了解决内部发生的各种问题而做重复性的工作;
努力去解决总是而遭到失败.
以上所列举的几种浪费的行为,在很长的一段时间里我做的每一件事情都存在这种行为.在生活中,我们每一个人都可以找到浪费的现象,并且有一些源头是我们可以消除的.我已经知道许多可以彻底地帮助我找到并鉴定我们每个人所造成的浪费的地方
时间分析
据我所知,一个最好的可以找到产生浪费现象的方法就是,用一个星期的时间每隔15分种记录一次你的行为.这种技术是我从Peter Drucker的没有时间限制的杰作<<有郊的执行>>这本书中,被他称为Duucker分析的这个程序中学到的.在一个记事本上,你基本上可以捕捉到在整整一个星期内每隔15分钟所发生的种种行为.在这个星期的最好一天,你将所花费的时间进行分类,并看看你花在第年类别上的所有时间是多少.通过这样做,可以揭示你花在很多事情上的很多时间,对你或你周围的人并不真正产生任何持久的影响或重要性.那些就是我们浪费的地方.
询问别人
另一个找出浪费的技术,就是询问别人,他们认为你所花费的时间是用来做什么事情.通常,你给别人的印象可以产生一定的基础,所以有些人关于你所花费的时间是用来做什么的这种观点,将会相当准确.
它不一定是你想要他们看到或者相信什么,但是从正常的观察来看它可能有一定的优点.再一次,你可以将这种反馈信息归纳成不同的种类(如果你询问到不同种类的人),并一起回顾你所花费的时间来做的所有事情,看看那些你认为是浪费的地方.
回顾你所追求的目标与热情
接下来,就是回顾一下你所追求的目标与热情.所有妨碍你追求目标的因素是什么?每一个妨碍你追求的重要的目标的因素,都是一种潜在的浪费.对于一些人来说,自然而然地产生了关键性的思想,所以好容易探索那些在生活和工作中重要的且已经找到了门路的事情的领域.列出一个包含10-20个你已经找到追求目标并有热情事情的清单,并看看那些你认为是消费的事情,很有能所有的这些你追求目标与热情的事情都是浪费的.
究竟你的一生中所浪费的是什么呢?
那些你所期望的\梦想的和渴望得到的东西,都是你很有可能经历的领域.可能这些是你的奇遇\旅行\运动\家庭\朋友和工作等等.当然,这些对每个人而言都是不同的,并且在你的生活中,通常很难抽得出时间来做那些重要的事情.所有那些你所做的事情都是浪费的.看起来,那些日常活动都是没完没了的,并且大多数人都不想做.以下做这些事情都是浪费的:
开车去/来上班;
付款;
做饭和打扫卫生;
修剪草坪和做其他园丁工作;
做饭并购买生活必要用品。
大多数人都同意那些对他们来说没能什么现实而持久价值的领域。更多具有争议性的浪费领域通常是我们的娱乐活动：
看电视；
玩网络游戏；
睡懒觉；
简单的事情复杂化，并且做起来拖拖拉拉，例如喝咖啡与吃午餐；
工作。
每个人都不认为以上这些是浪费的现象，但是这里确实存在浪费，它只是因为每个人对那些活动的看法的不同而不同。
同样，其他所有的在生活中你不得不做的事情，可能也在浪费的范围里。它们支持其他的一些你想做而且要花费更多时间的活动吗？你的生活方式是怎么样的？你是如何安排时间来购买食物与付款的？所有那些活动都是种浪费的行为，并且有必要将它增加到你的清单上，以便你能找到并消除它。
我曾经有灵感扩大这个话题的范围，并建立这个清单，是因为 一个来自Personal Hack由Andrew Bolis所写的一个邮件，他在邮件上说那个最大的生产垃圾场所已经被消除了。但是，我的清单关于那些在生活中浪费的物理时间因素与所承担工作任务，看起来非常特别。我列举的清单如下所示：
10种消除浪费的方法
为了消除学浪费现象，有很多可以选择的方法，有些方法是简单的，也有些方法是复杂的。在这里，你可以容易做使用10方法来消除生活中的浪费现象。
不要那么有耐心！
耐心是一种美德，而且大多数认识我的人都说我没有耐心。但是，我的优点就是我没有耐心去等待我身边的所有事情，我把它看作是一种巨大的损失，并且它是一个我已经学会消除的消费领域。我避免排除所造成的损失。我不会为了简单的快乐而去排队等候，比如喝酒或吃午餐。我不是喝咖啡的人，但是我每天都看到有很多人为了喝咖啡而在咖啡厅里排除，只是浪费他们的时间。在晚上空闲而且没有什么排除的时候我才去食品店买东西。当刚开始营业的时候，我才去银行或者去商店，以便我可以快点进去和出来而不用排除等候。如果你对每天的事情都没有耐心，那么你就可以容易找到消除浪费的地方。
恰好停止要做的事情！
如果你有期望、动机和能力，那么你完全可以停止做那些你认为是浪费时间和精力的事情。与这篇文章有联系的内容，涉及到好多教你如何这样做的内容。如果你完全能够决定停止做一些事情，这就是一种最容易消除你生活中的浪费现象的方法，并且是一种最快的方法。
使浪费的活动让人做起来更难！
你本来打算花30分钟看电视，但是结果，你迷上了它，一看就是2个小时。为了避免这种情况发生，你可以有目的地制定一个让你做起来更难的浪费活动。
例如，如果你想花更少的时间看电视，你可以将一个月内要做的小事情都集中在一起，或者你在电视机内装一个屏幕计时器，每天晚上使电视机在一个特定的时间看自动关闭。因为你不能如此不用心地去关闭电视机，你甚至可以将电视机的电线拨了，以致你不得不粗线并将插好使用，这样也可以帮助你减少花在看电视上的时间。移开你的长椅，使让不能对着电视机，在电视前设置一个一定要被移开才能看到电视的障碍物，或者你简直就想清除一个或更多个电视节目。如果你不得不分享它，或者在仅仅在一个很不方便的地方看电视，那么你几乎不用浪费好那么多时间来看电视。
这种方法对任何一种需要物体或者物理装置的活动都有效。在遥控装置上按一个“起动”按纽很简单，但是要成功地将它做好却很难。
高效率
不幸的是，有很多工作任务是我们不想去做的，但我还是不得不做。如果是那样的话，我们应该更有效率地去完成它，不致以它浪费我们那么多时间。如果你有一大堆事情要需要马上做的，并且你的工作任务没有优先程序，或者你只列出好多你要做的事情，你反反复复地做，那样经常会增加浪费时间。学会把要做的工作任务列出先后顺序，并找到多种高效率完成它的方法，那么你可以更快地处理那些浪费时间的工作任务。看看你所有的工作任务，并从中找出效率。
把注意力投在处理你所浪费的事情上
你想要的最后一件事就是将你的浪费的东西回收回来。不需要承担工作任务和那些没有通过并未完成的浪费的活动。完成这些还没完成且浪费的事情，使它们永久地消失。如果你在处理其中的一些事情时，迟迟不能将完成完成，那么你不得不全部重新再做，而且要花费越来越多的时间来完成所有的任务。把你的注意力放在处理你所浪费的事情上，并想一下将来你有时间去做你想做的事情。
充分利用
即使我在#5中只列出所关注的一些事情，但是经常在很多时候你的注意自我引示，并且你能容易地使任务多重化。例如，当你在做家务或者做运动的时候，你可以容易地听音乐或者故事书，如果这些事情是你喜欢做的，并且它允许你花费时间浪费在你认为有价值的事情上的时候。在开车或者做运动的时候，你可以听故事书，而不必要抽时间单独去听，这样你可以把时间花在你爱做的事情上。
减少你的旅行时间
这里一个激烈的改变，可以是在接近你工作的地方买套房子，或者变换工作，以便你工作的地方离你家更近。有多种其他也可以减少你的旅行时间的方法，或者使做其他事情的时间最大化。在你往返做其他工作的路上，你可以开小车或者利用公共交通工具，以便使你能做更多的工作。你可以改变你的工作时间，以便在交通顺畅的时候旅行，这样可以使你花更少的时间在往返工作的路上。
在精神上花时间来思考你的人生
让人惊奇的是，如何每天只用几分钟的时间来祈祷、沉思,或者精神上的学习，从而能够影响你把注意力集中在生活中的问题的能力。用在这些事情上的时间，并不能直接消除其他任何领域（除非它简单地取代它们），但是，它将完全地让你内心平静和放松。这将极大地帮助你的生产简单化，并且消除那些对你没能意义的事情。
找其他人帮你解决浪费你时间的事情
你可能已经把很多那些你认为即使你不想做但又有必要去做的浪费的项目，列在一个必须要做的类别里了。那么，这样做的好处就是，对于那些你认为是浪费的事情，经常有些人不那么认为，或者甚至有些人不去评价你不想做的事情究竟有什么意义.这对于服务性工作来说，是十分正确的，正如园丁工作一样。你不必一定要自己去做这些工作，有很多欢迎这种工作公司或个人可以帮你照料你的庭园。这是一种很容易消除浪费的方法（尽管它要花费一些人工费用）。
说“不”！
最持久的一种消除浪费的方法,就是学会说“不”。你那些你不想买的新东西说“不”，对那些你不想做的工作任务说“不”，那些浪费你的时间习惯说“不”。学会对那些你正在舒服了消除浪费的东西说“不”，并且将说“不”的范围扩大到其他领域。如果你能对生活中任何复杂的并且增加你的浪费的东西说“不”，那么你可以有时间去处理那些让你烦恼的事情，并且让你坚持消除那些你已经浪费的事物。当然，你不必要在消除了一个浪费的领域后，又有另一个浪费的领域来代替。当它是非常浪费的时候，你一定要有能力说“不”。所以，那些就是我最容易找到消除浪费的方法的东西。你的方法是什么呢？我喜欢听到你说那些方法也适合你，或者你自己也有消除浪费的方法。我希望这可以给你一种方法，让你找到那些你能停止做的事情，你能说“不”；而且，我也鼓励你去帮助其他人消除浪费。