In-Control Bedtime: Save Time on your Bedtime routine, for you and your kids.
By taking a few measurements, you can get you (or your kids) bedtime ‘in-control’, saving you time and increasing the consistency of getting to bed on time.
Feel free to skip to the section labeled “Application” if you want the ‘too long didn’t read’ version. Things get somewhat technical in the Theory sections. Mrs. Efficiency says the theory sections are hard to read but the application section had good ideas.
(Theory) Out Of Control Processes Are Unnecessary
Being in-control or out-of-control is defined by you. You can choose to have a narrow band(1 standard deviation) that would increase your chance of a processes getting out-of-control, or you can have a wider band that guarantees(3 standard deviations) 99.7% of the time you would stay in-control. The purpose here is to identify non-random causes of variation quickly so you can eliminate them or compensate for them.
In a factory, you may have a customer specification to make a minimum of 50 parts per hour. This is not necessarily your Lower Control Limit, this is a lower Spec Limit. (Note: In this article our bed time specification and our control limit will be the same value.) Based on collected data, you have found your factory can produce 74 parts per hour on average with a standard deviation of 3 parts per hour. If you want to stay within the control limit 99.7% of the time, you’d set your Upper Control Limit to 83 parts per hour and Lower Control Limit to 64 Parts Per Hour. Now suppose a robot starts breaking more often and you only produced 30 parts. To get your process in control you might buy a redundant robot that could be turned on during a breakage. You might monitor the robot closely and do maintenance. You can even expand what you consider ‘in control’. This could be acceptable and you can opt to run the robot for 2 shifts instead of 1 shift.
Standard control chart:
Simplified control chart:
At home, you may set your spec limit and control limit to have dinner ready at 6pm, but an extra long recipe or surprise visit from a friend could cause dinner not to be ready until 6:30pm. For these, you may consider starting dinner earlier, coming up with a plan if you have a future surprise visit, or removing long recipes from your regular list.
The benefit of control limits are to catch when your variation is increasing, and most importantly figuring out root causes and solutions to major (non-random) variation.
(Theory) Signs of Process Getting Out Of Control
Some rules of thumbs that signal that a process is getting out of control:
Any time a process falls outside the control limit
If you had ~6 consecutive points that were trending in the same direction, your process might be becoming out of control. (Ex: 15,17,19,20,22,23)
Eight consecutive points on the same side of the average
Fourteen consecutive data points alternating up and down.
(Application) Get your process In Control
Your goal is to figure out what time you need to start your bedtime routine, to ensure you get to bed on-time. In this example I’m going to use my kid’s bedtime because they are highly variable compared to me and the wife. This can be used with your bedtime routine as well.
The first and most important step to getting a process in-control is to measure and record the important metric. Without any measurements, you can’t be sure if you are hitting your targets. You also can’t determine what is an acceptable amount of variation if you have no measurement history.
For a bed time routine its probably best to measure the ‘Time In Bed’ metric. I would start the kid’s bedtime routine at 7:45PM each night and only track of the finish time.
After 3-6 measurements, you can get a general idea of what kind of variation between nights can be expected. The important thing to me was making sure my kids were in bed before 8pm. Taking your average Finish Time plus Variation, you can reliably get to bed within your ‘Control Limit’. As I realized the kids were often in bed at 8:01PM, I pushed the start of the bedtime routine back to 7:40PM.
You can also find causes of variation. If you had a measurement that was an outlier, it would be worth analyzing it and seeing if there are ways to eliminate it or prepare for it. We had an issue with kids wanting misplaced stuffed animals in their bed, but since this caused minutes of looking for toys, we removed stuffed animals from their bed. We got into a habit of giving the kids ice water before bed so I could keep the Air Conditioning at a higher temperature, now they only get it if there is extra time or I prepared ahead of time. The amount of time they get listening to/reading a book before bed can vary depending on how long they take performing their other bedtime tasks – some nights they only get a page of a book and other nights they can easily finish a whole book. These Inputs, including Start Time, will determine the Finish Time.
Finally you can further improve by honing in your process. Process flow diagrams may be a bit too rigid, but as you eliminate variation, you will be more likely to find ways to streamline the process. Trying to hit our goal time, I found myself multitasking by doing one of the steps(going through phonics) while we are walking to the bathroom. Another way to streamline is to perform a task for two children at once. Read a book that two kids like together to reduce time spent doing the same task with each child.
(Optional) Calculating Upper Control Limits and Lower Control Limits
For my personal home application, I did write down the times, but I didn’t actually calculate the standard deviation. I used feelings. Want to use something other than feelings? Calculate it:
Take some data points, at least 3 points, more is better. For instance 17, 19, 14 minutes.
Take the average so you can center your chart. For instance 16.6 minutes
Take the standard deviation(use a calculator/excel/google sheets). Multiply that standard deviation by 3 if you only want 1 failure per every other year. Only multiply by 2 if you want ~8 failures per year. For instance, 2.5*3=7.5 minutes or 2.5*2= 5 minutes. (single tailed normal distribution)
Take the average and add the standard deviation you calculated. 16.6 minutes + 7.5 minutes= Start the bedtime process 24.1 minutes before bedtime. (or I’m less critical, and will use the 2 standard deviation, 16.6 minutes + 5 minutes = 21.6 minutes.)
Trying to get the kids to bed by 8pm? Start the process at 7:38pm. It will work 357 days per year.
Process changes
Don’t expect a process to be in control forever. In a factory its common for changes to occur. Maybe you got a faster robot, maybe your customer wants an additional piece of foam glued on. These would involve getting the process back in control.
At home, you might have gotten injured and decide to include a round of physical therapy exercises in your bedtime routine. After a few measurements you can decently decide what time you need to start your bed time routine to get to bed on time.
The big take away here is that by having your process in control you can quickly spot non-random variations and make adjustments.
Save Time With An Industrial Engineering Study On Wiping Counters
Using path studies, motion studies, equipment options, quality metrics, and more, we find ways to save time cleaning counters.
Optimal Path
Try not to wipe back and forth over the same spot. Wipe in big strokes, not overlapping, hitting an area only once. Start in one corner, go across, move up, and across a not yet touched area. This is under the category of Coverage Path Planning.
Some best case optimizations is to start and stop in the same place, assuming that same place is the end destination. For instance, I need to wet a rag at the start and rinse a rag upon completion. It would be best to start and finish near the sink. It would be inefficient to start that the sink and end at the other side of the room. Sometimes this is unavoidable based on the size of a surface.
An important factor can be the shape of the surface. Theoretically a spiral motion reduces the number of times you decelerate, however if you don’t have a round table, you will be wasting time doing the corners that were not covered in a spiral motion. For a square/rectangle table, I found long motion across the table was more efficient.
For more reading about optimal pathing, here is a link to a study I found interesting:
http://retis.sssup.it/~giorgio/paps/2018/RAL18.pdf
The right equipment
Small sponges can take longer to clean a surface than a larger towel. The idea of using a larger towel seems great, you may need extra soap but you can accomplish more, quicker.
Use the right cloth, absorbent with some abrasion. Microfiber or cotton could work, but each cloth will be woven differently. Waffle Weaves are popular for cleaning because the ridges can help apply extra pressure on surfaces that would otherwise be spread out with a flat weave.
Environment
Good lighting will help you see dirty spots and will save you time and effort from straining to see these spots.
On a similar note, the quieter the area, the less distractions and higher focus you can have.
Do you need to move items out of your way to clean under? It might be worth finding a permanent spot for those items to avoid freqent cleaning underneath them.
Consider the placement of rags/towels, cleaning supplies, trash/disposal areas, and laundry baskets. They should be easily accessible and preferably along the path of your workflow.
What quality is needed? Perfection, good enough, or damage control?
If you can only use one section of your counter, you won’t need to clean the rest.
It may be worth letting things soak for ~3-10 minutes, bonus points for soap and hot water. My personal process for perfection is,
- Hot water and soap round
- Wait a few minutes
- Wipe with a mostly dry water only rag, soaking up lots of the old dirty water and scrubbing any spots that need it
- Final round where in one hand I have a lightly watered clean rag, then a completely dry clean rag(or paper towel) that soaks up that water
However, if you are only trying to prevent newly dirtied surfaces from getting messes stuck on: don’t get your rag too wet. Too much water will require extra wipes to dry. It might not be worth using soap which would require an extra round of wiping to remove the soap.
Finally, if you are ultra efficient and rarely clean, you could use a dry rag and wipe only solid objects off. This is a ‘debatably good enough’ quality.
Motion
Some Therbligs. To turn on faucet water, you release a latch/use a faucet. You search for a rag and grasp it. You use the water or rest, waiting for the water to get hot. You may also search and grasp for soap that you will use with the rag and water. Mixing the rag, water, and soap is assembly. Then you transport the load to the counter. Finally you use the rag on the countertops. Upon completion you disassemble the water, rag, and soap by releasing the latch/use the faucet and rinse the rag. Finally you may throw the rag in the laundry, releasing empty.
To make this process more efficient, we look at all the Therbligs. Here are some opportunities for optimization and elimination.
- Ensure rags/towels are visible and easily accessible. We keep ours in an open bin on the counter.
- Do something useful while the faucet water is heating up. Fill up nearby empty water bottles to increase your Water Per Second, pick up items that might be covering the countertops, load/empty the dishwasher, etc..
- Ensure soaps are visible and easily accessible. We keep ours on the counter.
- Don’t spend too much time mixing the water, rag, and soap, it doesnt matter much. Ensuring a perfectly lathered rag is Over Processing waste. A quick mix is good enough.
- Upon completion, rinse the rag, but only as much as needed to get large debris off. If you are putting it in the laundry, no reason to ensure all soap and dirty water is gone.
AI suggestions
Clear surfaces ahead of time, to prevent setting down towels/rags/sponges to get to necessary surfaces. I might disagree, you could multitask lifting surfaces and wiping.
Potentially using a bucket/spray bottle to prevent trips back to the sink. This personally wouldn’t work for most of my messes.
Use a spray bottle.
Use microfiber
Challenge yourself to get under a time
Alternative Ideas
Trade favors with roommates, have them clean the counters in exchange for you doing something else. For instance, you could bulk cook food and trade that. Bulk cooking benefits from reducing the number of set up and tear down actions, win win win.
Hire someone.
Use a disposable cleaning wipe. This eliminates a few steps such as turning on water, waiting for water to warm up, and doing laundry. This would be dependent on how dirty the counter was, if you are cost conscious, and if you are an environmentalist.
Use a vacuum cleaner.
Attach a handle onto a rag/use a kitchen mop, this will let you push further without taking steps.
You could use a towel to push everything on the floor and have a robot vacuum cleaner clean the mess.
Conclusions
This was a first step into Efficient Cleaning. While this wiping counters/tables task might only take a minute or two, the ideas about quality, motion waste/Therbligs, optimal equipment, and optimal pathing might help influence other cleaning activities to help you save time.
Kitchen Inventory, never run out of ingredients when its time to cook using Push/Pull
Can’t make the meal you wanted to? Ever run out of an ingredient and you only discovered it while cooking?
Industrial Engineers have solved this problem because shutting down the production line costs somewhere in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per minute. Running out of inventory is preventable. This application will prevent you from kitchen inventory mistakes, saving you time, money, and frustration.
Summary
There are two types of systems. A push system is when you plan ahead, predicting how much inventory(groceries) you need. A pull system is when you buy more inventory(groceries) as you are running out.
In our kitchen, we will use a hybrid system as most factories implement. Bulk items use a pull system, only buying more of an item when it gets low. Ingredients that are used in only a specific recipe will use a push system, and will be planned before going to the grocery store.
You likely already do this to some extent, but occasionally mistakes happen. Suddenly run out of a spice and you have another recipe containing it later this week? Industrial Engineers have found ways to error proof this.
Push System: Make the meals you want to eat
This may be obvious, but according to some anecdotes, some people buy groceries based on feeling.
Decide what meals you will eat until your next grocery trip, we write ours down on a physical calendar. At this point, go through the recipes and write what ingredients you need for these meals.
Some possible ways to make this faster are to create weekly templates. Suppose you have 4 weeks of ideas, you can type/write the ingredients for each week, and print/scan a copy. We did this in the original Efficiency Is Everything – In Cooking cookbook, click here.
Pull System: Never run out of ingredients mid-week
How often do you check to see if you are running low on a bulk item like Sugar/Rice/Flour/Spices? If you check weekly, you are wasting time. If you never check, you are going to run out of inventory.
For a pull system to work, you need to figure out how much is the maximum quantity you will need of the ingredient between grocery trips. For instance, I will not need more than 20 cups of rice per week, so I will make sure the systems will cue/trigger me to add the ingredient to my list when we go below 20 cups of rice in the inventory.
Here are some pull systems:
0 effort, possible spoilage, 2 bin system: You buy 2 containers of this bulk food. When one container runs out, buy another. Simple, no effort. You run the risk of spoilage, and the inventory takes up some extra space. In the example, the two bags of rice must have at least 20 cups of rice. If you want to save time, this is the best system.
Some effort, draw a line: Take a pen/marker, draw on the container a line that will visually remind you to buy more of the product. You could also do this with storage containers and mark a line that indicates when to re-buy. This doesn’t take up extra space but does take a moment to draw a line.
More effort, save 1 week worth of food in a backup container: Figure out the maximum need between grocery sessions. Put that amount in a backup container separate from your bulk container. When you run out of your bulk container, put it on your grocery list. You now can go into your separate container to last the rest of the week
Next Steps
If you aren’t already using a push system, its a good habit to begin. I especially recommend the premade weeks. The pull system is easy enough that you shouldn’t have trouble implementing it.
If you have a partner, make sure they understand the two systems, they might have further ideas on how to improve it.
The goal is to continuously improve your home processes, if something doesn’t work, change it.
Make A Spaghetti Diagram To Save Time, Easy and Fun
This tool is so easy and fun, I was saving it for a book… This is peak Efficiency Is Everything, this is the good times, we are in them now.
While a process flow diagram is the go-to tool for finding waste, this is a supplementary tool that may be able to catch moments that the process flow diagram did not. This is also faster than a process flow diagram, it can be completed in 5-20 minutes.
What is a Spaghetti Diagram?
A Spaghetti Diagram starts as an overhead view of a floor. A pen is put down at the starting location of a process. You then hold the pen down, traveling through all the locations of each steps with the pen, never picking up the pen until its finished. When you are finished your page will look like Spaghetti is on it with all the lines.
You will find two benefits from this: as you travel along with your pen you will find waste by simply seeing it and thinking about it. Then at the completion you can look back and find locations that have significant overlap, cause you to move far away, or are repetitive. Now that you can visualize the waste, you can find solutions to eliminate them and save time.
An Example
Below is a poor drawing of my house, but it will get the job done. This is my morning routine when I do exercise, this includes getting my 2 kids showered.
Here is the completed diagram, the highly trafficked areas and far away destinations were obvious. Now these are a major focus for improvement.
Findings
- I’m taking many trips downstairs, some are necessary, one was poor planning, another is that the kids finish showering at different times. I can fix the bad planning and I might be able to find a solution to the different shower finish times.
- I noted I was taking an extra 3-4 steps to put towels away. We may be able to reduce by moving a towel rack.
- Again I see that taking the kids in separate moments is wasting time. I can probably lift all 70lbs shared between them…
As a side note, I mention that I messed up the floor plan of the house, drawing a phantom area of a room that doesnt exist in my house. It really should be split between the two closets. It didn’t matter, so I left it. (I keep my clothes on a dresser next to the bathroom.)
How To Make A Spaghetti Diagram
- Get a pen/pencil/crayon/marker
- Get a (mostly) blank piece of paper, notebook paper is fine, some marks are fine.
- Draw your home’s floor plan. As close as you can, don’t worry non-critical mistakes.
- Find your starting point. Could be your Bed, Garage, Living Room, etc…
- Place your pen/(writing tool) on the starting location, do not lift it up until this is complete
- Drag your pen from location to location you would be moving during this process. Continue this until the process is complete.
- Lift up pen, look for any areas that have many overlaps and see if there is anything you can do to optimize or eliminate.
Try it!
See how quick you can visualize your waste. Do not dwell on a poorly drawn layout, don’t worry about the proportions, don’t worry about non-straight edges or mild inaccuracies. Don’t let the whole exercise take more than 20 minutes, aim to take 5-15 minutes. Try it!
If you have any waste that you cannot seem to find a solution for, send me your spaghetti diagram and I can think about it. michaelkirk@efficiencyiseverything.com
Industrial Engineering Laundry – Ergonomics For Quicker And Easier Laundry
Lead Engineer- Michael Kirk:
There are two sections, theoretical “By The Book”, where you will hear the most optimal situations you can hope to achieve. These are good to know, so you can think about them when doing laundry. There are lots of good ideas in there.
Finally, we will go into real world tips to get closer to optimal, so you can save time and effort right away.
This study was funded by Elizabeth P. Thank her for donating to study Efficient Laundry!
Engineering Theory- The Most Optimal (by the book)
Ergonomics is a hybrid of human health and engineering. This combines the mathematical and logic rigor of engineering to studies in humans. This data comes out as measurements, estimations, and best practice.
Enhancing Attention
- One book suggested human attention is limited to ~30 minutes on a routine job. No reason to feel bad about getting bored of household tasks, you are only human.
- Room Temperatures above 79 degrees are bad.
- Work quickly, being motivated is proven to make you work quicker. Literally, thinking, can make you more Efficient. Rally! Don’t be weak!
Information Processing
- Making a decision is fatiguing. Regardless if its trivial, the mind needs to see, understand, think, and convert into an output. It should be noted that after basic skills are obtained, people get better at speed.
- Since these tasks require decisions, both in muscle control and mind, proficiency will happen with time.
Best Practices- For Reach
- A 5th percentile female can reach approx 2 feet, and this can be extended an additional 9 inches when standing.
- Bending over is not desired. A rolling cart may help elevate baskets off the floor and ease transportation.
- Motion is not desired, if you can grab multiple items per bend, you will save time and effort.
- Another reminder, Motion is not desired, items that need to be put far away can be tossed aside. Hang up all necessary items, once.
Ergonomic Facts
- Pulling motions are best done between 120 and 180 degrees, with best performance at 150 degrees. while pulling >120 degrees. This means its easier to pick items up below you, and put away higher.
- However, any sort of grabbing without bending over or reaching is encouraged.
- Use a power grip! Instead of using fingers, use your fist to pick up. This is stronger than fingers.
- Discomfort will cause inefficiency, even a 5cm/2in too high counter can cause shoulder pain.
- Static, holding still, restricts blood flow and requires longer rest periods. Dynamic movement allows blood to circulate during relaxation.
- To reach further, bend your hip(8.2in/20cm) and rotate(1.8in/4.5cm) and extend shoulder(4in/10cm). Those are your 3 ways to extend.
Conditions
- For long tasks, if you can adjust between sitting and standing, this is preferred. Equipment exists to change the height level.
- Sitting is better for blood flow.
- Try not to hold the same position for more than 15 seconds, that is when lactic acid begins to build up.
- Avoid moving/transportation to put something away.
Reduce or Increase Stress
- Stress can be good, according to one book, a 10/10 is too stressful, a 3-5 stress is beneficial. 1/10 stress was not enough.
- The arrangement of your workplace(dimensions, relative locations, etc…), makes a major contribution to how a task is handled.
- What are the accuracy requirements? Do things need to be folded/unwrinkeled? Could you change this to be happier doing laundry? Or make more challenging?
- Is there flow? Work-rest cycles may be beneficial and for extended tasks, having start-stop times.
- Environment- Temperature, family/pets, surroundings.
Reduce Boredom
- One book had root causes of boredom, here is a take on how to make tasks less boring.
- Short cycle times may be boring. Is there an opportunity for process flow?
- A task with few opportunities for body movement gets boring, its okay to stretch/exercise muscles.
- Could cooler temps get you motivated?
- Have coworkers. Should we be doing laundry with family?
- People with high abilities and eager to excel find boredom, so next time you do laundry, try to be more Efficient. This is your new challenge, let us know if you find any discoveries.
- Dim work environment causes boredom. Changing color RGB light strips are a solution to boredom, or maybe the book intended to use brighter white light.
Real World Tips – Applied Efficiency
Here are applicable to everyone efficiency tips.
Sort Clothes Faster
Upon research, there are Efficient Comparison Sorting Algorithms. These can be used to sort your laundry faster. A take at Laundry Quicksort–
- Pick 2 items to collect, one for each hand. IE: Mrs Socks, Mrs. Underwear
- Collect these with minimal digging, and put away
- Put away large items that prevent seeing new items, don’t think too hard about this.
- Continue with this routine, picking large quantities as a priority, and removing large items that inhibit seeing.
The goal here, limit motion like digging around and extended searching. Like Quicksort, your visible items are your ‘sorting set’, and items you cannot see are not sorted. All while picking up many items reduces the number of times you bend/turn to get clothes.
Hanging up clothes may be better separated into a different task. This is highly dependent on if you are sorting clothes near your closet and are near hangers.
If laundry is done at the individual level rather than family level, it be quicker due to less sorting.
Workspace Tips
- Limit Transportation. Do your work within range if possible. Consider Swapping the contents of drawers to make sorting possible without taking steps.
- Turn Less, consider that turning your body is motion, if doing laundry on the bed causes you to turn significantly, consider sorting in a different location.
Equipment
Note: this equipment suggestion is best practice, it serves to give you an idea what an Ergonomic Laundry Basket would be. Elevated, with wheels.
If you are interested, these are called Laundry Carts.
Even better, some laundry carts have false/auto adjusting bottoms to elevate laundry to make it easier to reach. Push laundry carts instead of pulling. Although changing muscle groups has economic advantages as well.
Next Steps
Get excited about doing laundry, like you never have before. I was shocked at how fast Quicksort had me putting away clothes.
With 5 ergonomics books under my belt, I expect more household tasks to get optimized, and laundry to be further studied with MODAPTS, which are used to code task time like reaching and grabbing. They use this in Sweat Shop Sewing.
Make More Efficiency
If we can reach 5,000 dollars, we are currently at ~2000 dollars, I will match and we can finance 2 interns to work 12 hours a week for 28 weeks completing studies that will help everyone.
The goal is to raise 5000 dollars to create more studies on Industrial Engineering Life.
Cost Freeze
Lead Engineer- Michael Kirk:
We are on Cost Freeze and my credit cards transactions for this month was nearly empty outside groceries and gas. Cost Freeze works.
How Cost Freeze Works
A tool used at the best and most successful fortune 500 companies to tell everyone- Stop.
Non essential is maintained or removed.
Its quite simple. You need to eat. You need to buy gas. Rent/Mortgage, heat(lowered), subscriptions ended.
Then everyone realizes this problem is not so simple and getting some non essentials will improve the situation.
When you begin Cost Freeze, you stop spending money, you scrutinize every purchase, and you review your reoccurring expenses.
Spend Money to Save
Insulation of your home, LED lights, and more can pay for itself.
Lighting
The Math
Multiple hundred dollars a year in potential savings. Note that expected hours of use are high, but these LEDs are going to last years, this is a quick and dirty estimation. Cost was less than 100 dollars to make the change.
Can you imagine other areas where spending money saves money?
Mind Tricks
Going on ‘Cost Freeze’ is a change in mentality that you decide, declare, and carryout. You will start to save money, and on an extreme basis.
This is cause for innovation, as scarcity in spending money will have you find other uses for time. For instance, instead of getting pie at an expensive restaurant, baking a pie with friends is nearly free. No driving, no parking, no tipping, no drinks- still 100% friendship.
Allocate Resources
After a freeze in spending money, you may find it almost necessary to improve your life. Old shoes, haircut, carbonated drinks, etc…
There is a way to deal with this. Budget. Put a set amount(ie: 50 dollars) towards non essentials, and decide if you would rather fix your shoes or drink diet caffeine free coke.
Hold On
The mild pain of saying ‘No’ to things gives you the benefit of security as you can extend the use of your assets.
While others are in panic about making debt payments, Cost Freeze extends your cash many months.
This may be overkill, but after an economy recovers you will be stronger than before. Good decisions today pay dividends and failure is expensive.
Rational Decision Making – Picking Your Next Job With Math
Lead Engineer- Michael Kirk:
If you have been staying at a company ‘because the health insurance is good’, you should know the real world $/hr benefit. That good feeling might be a costly mistake.
Data Driven Decision Making
Compensation($), Time(hr), and Qualities make up the various inputs to aid decision making.
Compensation = Income + Benefits + Vacation
There are a few ways to do this, it can be simple, comparing vacation and health insurance benefits. If you will go to college and getting work to pay for it, you can include that too. This should be 0 if you do not achieve this educational goal.
Your total compensation adds up every value you get from a company. These are added up. Some ideas: health insurance(vs healthcare.gov), college(if you actually attend), 401k matching(only if it vests), cellphone, bonus(only if the economy and company is doing good), and think of any possible benefit so you can attach a value to it. There is an opportunity to add subjective values, ie- I like my current job, valued at $5,000.
Avoid straying too much from data driven mathematic to prevent variation and error.
On Health insurance estimations. I’ve found that the best possible health insurance benefit covers everything, worst case ~$9500/yr single, $25,000/yr family. However more reasonably your entire family wont be hitting the max out of pocket each year and this is more like $6600 benefit for a family. If you cant be bothered to go to healthcare.gov and find out how much your health insurance is, you can estimate a number less than $6000. Most people with ‘good’ health insurance plan may save you closer to ~$3000/year vs healthcare.gov.
Costs- Time and Gas Money and Security?
You can include drive time and gas. This would raise your expected ~40 hour/week workload and reducing your $/hr accordingly.
Gas costs can be calculated/estimated to factor an additional expense for distance.
Could you factor in job security? A contract job has a higher risk of losing employment. For example, a GM employee or contract worker has a ’15’ percent chance of being cut. Should you factor this into a job at GM? These are your decisions to make rational job choices.
Real Life Example
Here is an example to show the possible complexities of this calculation. This could be simpler for your own life. Adjusted $/hr = (All Compensation – All Expenses)/Total Time working+ commuting.
Data and situations are not perfect. Instead of an easy ‘fill in’ the blank, you should consider your situation and put numbers to it. Reminder that this is a multi-thousand dollar per year decision.
This outcome favors seeing the outcome of GM’s 15% cut to its workforce, as the commute and lack of vacation days at Nissan make the job a slight economic disadvantage. The final decision might come down to a ‘better career move’ decision as both jobs are competitive. Adjusted, the difference is only ~$2,500/yr. The career decision would only need to be worth $2,500 more to move to Nissan.
Rational Decision Making
The goal is to get closer to a good decision and notify you of abnormalities. Putting numbers to life decisions will often showcase harsh realities of being incorrect. A previous lifestyle, job, or career could be found to be a worse decision than a new opportunity. A new opportunity could also be a guilty pleasure to run from your current problems. Math can make you aware of these subconscious feelings. Its up to you to decide if that cost difference is worth it.
Big Efficiency News + How To Start An Efficiency Lifestyle for 2018
First, we have been hard at work studying various restaurants for the best Calories and Protein Per Dollar. If you haven’t visited our Food page, its a comprehensive list of optimizing food. Note: This article is how we eat 99% of our meals.
Hopefully this is every restaurant you would like. Feel free to comment any others you want studied.
It seems Google is starting to pick this up, you can ask ‘The highest Calorie per dollar food’, and it should tell you.
Burger King Per Dollar
Chick-Fil-A Per Dollar
Hardees Per Dollar
White Castle Per Dollar
Wendy’s Per Dollar
Five Guys Calories Per Dollar
Panara Bread Per Dollar
Jimmy Johns Calories Per Dollar
Panda Express Per Dollar
Pizza Per Dollar (Jets, Little Caesars, and more)
Chili’s Per Dollar
Taco Bell Per Dollar
McDonalds Per Dollar
Efficiency News
I don’t like to talk about myself, I really just want to provide you high quality data. However I had people reach out about my absence. Skip ahead for this weeks article.
I’d like to make quality articles rather than hit deadlines. I had been working more than 70 hours a week between Efficiency and my Engineering job. Paying an Intern only made me raise the quality of the articles rather than reduce workload.
I want to spend a few months programming an App that will make Mutual Funds feel like Cash. “Cash” with a 7% yearly return but with an ability to exchange without fees. This isnt cryptocurrency, this is a solution to a problem I had since I worked at a clothing store. I asked my boss if I could be paid in NASDAQs instead of USD- No. USD inflates, Investment provides value. I’m excited to program for a few months, I hope to come back to Efficiency with some new skills.
In addition, we have a team starting a charity, Kids In Kitchens, where we teach 5th graders how to make a no-chop slowcooker meal to feed 5 people for 6 dollars.
I stopped playing video games and started sewing with a focus on fashion. I post my creations on Instagram.
While I take a break, I’d like to set some very reasonable goals to work toward an Efficient Life.
You Need To Be Efficient
“Oh, you really do this in your life?”
My neighbor was shocked when I was telling him about having shelves in our kitchen to reduce time opening and closing cabinets.
While I don’t expect you to remodel your kitchen, I want to you implement major improvements that will pay dividends throughout your life.
Make Life Lazier, Apply Process Flow
Reducing steps in daily routines are something that pays off instantly.
Something like your daily morning routine should be optimized in detail, setting aside time for timed and recorded trial. Either having a partner write down every detail of every step of your routine, or recording and reviewing your routine will give you an opportunity to find waste.
Find steps that do not add value and make it a goal to either remove or reduce that time.
This is something you can do on smaller scales. When cutting food, moving the cutting board and knives closer to the refrigerator. Simply being aware that (movement) Waste is significant will begin to make a serious impact to giving you more free time.
You Know Expensive Foods, Its Time To Change
You know what I’m going to say,
The data has shown over and over that processed foods, frozen, canned, fast food, restaurant food, are not as cost effective as fresh foods.
Could you make it a goal to stop eating out?
3 quick solutions to laziness:
Protein Shakes– Can be made in 1 minute, filling, add some veggies and its a real meal.
Breakfast– Eggs and Breakfast Sausage take me less than 6 minutes to get 1000 calorie.
Bulk Food– We make 6+ servings for 2 people every night. Tupperware!
If you must eat out, limit yourself to only top calorie or protein per dollar items. This is a self-control thing. Eating out isnt going to be healthy, might as well eat it cheap.
Otherwise we eat out for birthdays.
Would you try Biphasic Sleep?
Regardless what time you go to bed or wake up, biphasic sleep can work with almost every lifestyle. Misses Efficiency Wakes up at 6am and takes her nap as late as 9pm. After that, she has a shot of energy and we have 3 hours of productivity, fun, or whatever the situation needs.
Take a look at our sleep articles. Many other users have made the change and say they are not going back.
Save 12 Hours A Week By Taking A Nap- Efficiency Articles
Our First Time Doing Biphasic Sleep + 4 Tips To Fall Asleep Fast
1 Year of Biphasic Sleep Later- Lessons Learned
Testimonials and Tips from other Biphasic Sleepers
Jim’s Experience And Tips on Biphasic Sleep
Jake’s Testimonial on Biphasic Sleep
Warnings- Why Biphasic Sleep Didn’t Work For Hailey and Ryan
Next Steps
I want you to think about your daily life and where there is waste, fix your food (dont be weak), and try something new.
Keep me excited about Efficiency, implement Efficiency in your homes and teach people how to optimize their life.
Check out my favorites from 2017
Save Money Without Shopping For Gas (Applied Secretary Problem)
Water Per Second. Non-trivial amounts of time are spent obtaining water.
Removing Non Value Added Marketing -Essential if you never taken a marketing class
Save Time Eating-Intermittent Fasting
Expand your Efficiency
Get more Efficiency to improve your daily life. Subscribe and get three slow cooker recipes designed to be low cost, quick and healthy.Theory: Identifying the 7 Forms of Waste
Efficiency-Michael:
The intended purpose of this website is to teach fundamentals of Industrial Engineering to everyone, so it can be applied to home.
You are the expert of your own life, once you learn the tools, you will be able to apply them.
While we live on 19,000 dollars a year, the goal isn’t to be cheap. The goal is to live life and to meet our specifications. Allocating time and money resources optimally to hit defined qualities.
There are only 2 sections, The Concepts, and Tips By Example. The first section puts a significant emphasis on the concept, while the second is application. As you read through the first section, take the time to think about where you have this in your own life.
The Concept- Forms of Waste
Transportation
In The Factory- The movement of products. Transportation from one factory to another, transportation moving a product from one assembly line station to another, packaging the product, and moving it. Two major notes to remember about transportation-
- The customer doesn’t get value out of transportation
- Transportation is one of the largest forms of waste
At Home- Moving yourself, essential items for living, and non-essential items.
Inventory
In The Factory- Raw materials sitting around costing extra warehouse space. Money spent on unused material that could otherwise be invested until additional material is needed.
In The Home- Bulk purchases can often mean buying too much causing expiration or storing it for a long time.
Motion
In The Factory- While transportation is movement, motion is the action. A machine having to open and close for each cycle is Motion waste.
At Home– Looking for a tool while performing a taste is a non value added movement. Adjusting a shirt that is getting ironed is Motion waste. You want to be ironing the shirt, not moving and flattening in the preparation of the ironing process.
Waiting
In The Factory- Huge form of waste, although it can be spotted quite easily. Machines not performing actions, Humans on their cellphones.
At Home- Waiting for other people to ‘Get Ready’, waiting for water to boil or food to cook. If the waiting is significant, multi-tasking is popular. If waiting during a home task is repetitive, it may be worth optimizing. Although we have phones now, that makes waiting more enjoyable.
Over Processing
Think of Over Processing as “Trying too hard”.
In The Factory– This is irresponsibly exceeding quality expectations. If you are making white lights, creating a light that also changes colors is an unnecessary expense. If you are making a smooth bowl, you might go above and beyond to make the bowl smoother than needed. This costs time and money that could otherwise be passed down to the customer.
At Home- Imagine if you spent all day making a french cuisine for your in-laws, only to find out they are Ohio State fans 😛
Or if you enjoy offbrand 3$ Moscato, buying a more expensive brand because its ‘nicer’. As long as 3$ Moscato meets quality expectations, the extra expense is waste.
Over Production
In The Factory- Making more products than needed. Consider the effects of making 2x more product that is immediately needed. Those products need to be Transported, put in Inventory, and wait to be bought. If your customer changes their buying habits or product specifications, you will be left with Inventory you cannot sell.
At Home- Bulk preparation is fine, as long as its used. If you ever meal prepped so much food that you got sick of it, or it expired, you have over produced.
Defects
In The Factory- Defects mean:
- Reworking defects out of a product
- Scrapping a product
Reworking takes time, often takes material, and is an interruption to a fluid process. Scrapping is the complete loss of product, disposing of the time and material used to create that process.
At Home- Remember that defects must be severe enough to cause extra processing. If you can eat slightly burnt food, that meets quality expectations. If you cut off the burnt part or throw away a batch of burnt food, this is an example of dealing with defects. Defects can also happen on processes, like doing your hair or setting the temperature on your shower.
Examples- Tips To Reduce Waste In Your Life
Transportation
Transportation is such a gigantic and frequent waste, even drinking water can be optimized to save over 1000 hours in your lifetime.
Transportation is often a repeatable, daily occurrence. I’ve conducted time studies to optimize my route to work. Saving 6 minutes per trip to work adds up to an entire hour a week.
Consider Why you are moving around the house. A spaghetti diagram can be used to visualize transportation during a routine. For this, draw your home layout, put your pen down at a starting point, and dont lift until you finish the routine. Overlap of lines are opportunities to consolidate actions.
Inventory
Buying/renting too much space. The worst offender is Cash. Having USD means losing value every year to inflation. I havent talked about investment, but I should start. I personally recommend a blend of liquid assets(stocks), tax advantaged accounts(401k and IRA), cryptocurrency, and gold.
Also consider renting things instead of buying. A quarter million dollar mortgage on a vacation home gives you the ability to visit the location of your home. Could that quarter million dollars be spent on vacations ‘Just In Time’? The potentials of investment and constantly changing world makes buying things only when needed very valuable.
Motion
It would be a waste of water to clean a car from the wheels to the top. Shuffling through boxes trying to find a tool is waste. Watching water heat up to a boil. These might be difficult to solve immediately, but knowing the waste means thinking toward long term solutions.
Waiting
While everyone waits, I want to point out a life changer-
Clean while you cook. As you cook dinner, put away dishes, wipe off dirty pans while they are still hot, throw away packaging from ingredients. Do this while you wait for water to boil or while meats and veggies are cooking. Find time, but make sure food doesnt burn.
While waiting, I have a cocktail of information from Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit. Making the most of this down-time.
Over Processing
Quality is the ‘name of the game’.
How low cost and quick can you live? Can you live off flour? Or do you need a hearty meal of vegetables for your nutrition and sanity?
Tying shoes is a preventable waste. However, if you want to be faster than a shoe horn, you would need to sacrifice style for slip-ons. Do you need nicer shoes to meet a social status?
Consider what is needed, not what your income can afford. If you want a phone with a nice camera, look up phones with great cameras, THEN compare by price. Often people buy the latest iPhone without any research into competitor quality.
Apple Soapbox- I find Apple products a terrible value. Their phones are relatively slow compared to the competition, however iPhones have a fantastic camera. The cost for the phone dwarfs other phones with fantastic cameras. Further limited Apps and no widgets make me wonder what quality metrics people are paying for. The Apple Logo?
Over Production
Buying in bulk can be deceptive. You will often consume more, faster. Think of what happens when you buy a 2L of soda. Or 1750ml of liquor.
This could also be buying things ahead of needing them. You might think you need to buy a dog leash because its on sale, and someday, you might own a dog. However there is a very real risk of losing the leash, it consuming space in your home, motivating you to buy a larger home.
Defects
If defects are common, checklists can be used to prevent re-work. This can be used to make sure you leave your room with all the clothing items needed for the day, or make sure you have your lunch, ID, and laptop before going to work.
Starting the shower too hot or cold puts you at high risk for a defect in your morning routine. Solve this by Error Proofing your shower.
Think About Waste
As you do chores around the house, think about moving around, think about expectations. Can you find ways to save seconds on a process or save money on things you enjoy?
Expand your Efficiency
Get more Efficiency to improve your daily life. Subscribe and get three slow cooker recipes designed to be low cost, quick and healthy.High Per Dollar – The Data – Legal vs Pharma vs Illegal Drugs.
Efficiency- Michael:
Disclaimer: This is a study, may the data be used for Good.
Efficiency is often measured as the ratio of useful output to total input, which can be expressed with the mathematical formula r=P/C, where P is the amount of useful output (“product”) produced per the amount C (“cost”) of resources consumed.
Product Per Cost Of Various Drugs- Data Collection
The data gathered for this study was from peers, it varies by region, person, etc… however the data came out to be significantly more consistent than expected. Hours High Per Dollar seems to come out on an exponential scale rather than linear. This made it forgiving for price differences.
Drug should be pretty straight forward, Situation is how its consumed. IE: 5 Cups of coffee, 1 (one time use), Average Smoker(daily). Duration was close to the average, and rounding up/down taking into consideration half-life and order of reaction.
Remember all of this is user data, if you would like to contribute data, leave a comment and I’ll get it updated.
Hours High Per Dollar
Caffeine Vs Everybody
Warning Caffeine kicks butt. I’m not impartial, I drink 5 Cups of Caffeine a day.
Appetite suppressant, nootropic, and highest High Per Dollar. Caffeine is the best drug, relatively safe, and wildly accessible.
The accessibility of caffeine means many forms of getting the drug. While I used drip coffee, even an expensive trip to a Fast Coffee Shop is lower cost than many alternatives.
Now, Caffeine might not make you forget your existence and decide to live the rest of your life as an Orange- but it can be powerful.
Even with a high tolerance, 5 cups of coffee during work hours will have me focused, excited, and jittery. Plus, who knows, maybe questioning your own existance on psychoactive drugs could be a bad idea. Then again, it is possible to die from caffeine, so- use this data for Good.
Other Oddities
A few things to point out:
- Hard Drugs are Bad. Heroin and Cocaine are not very good deals for occupying time
- Weed appears lower cost than Alcohol on a “One Off” bases and an addictive habitual use
- Prescription drugs vary drastically by type
- Your best deal for a daily habit is Caffeine, then Weed, then Alcohol, then Nicotine, then hard drugs.
If there is any interest in deeper studies like a more comprehensive Nicotine or Prescription drug study, comment. My drug use is limited to daily caffeine, alcohol, weed, and occasionally Kava Tea.
Can this be used for Good?
I’m unsure what problems this study can solve.
Could the math behind this encourage better government policy toward drugs?
Could this be used by addicts to attempt to replace an expensive drug with a safer and lower cost alternative?