Presence leads to Improvement

Having read "Eat that frog first", a friend said, " I am now convinced that one should first finish up the challenging task and then handle the easier ones." I couldn't help asking him, " How is it not a commonsense?" When I was about 8-9 years old, or rather young, I used to help my mother wipe the floor clean at our home. Naturally, I had ended up at first cleaning the places with difficult approach or access and where things needed to be moved, and then I used to quickly wipe the remaining places clean. I had never given this a thought but that got converted into a habit. And it stayed with me during and after graduation and even after marriage. [ If you know what I mean ;) ] Just kidding!

Anyway, point is, with this habit, one can plan his hour, day, week, month, year and even whole life and get positive results. This increases effectiveness and enthusiasm along with efficiency. Ready tools like Pareto Principle and MoSCoW, which are available online, can be used to learn how to prioritize. You can choose the one that is suitable to you and plan further. It could be the case that even after prioritizing, you end up doing differently. How to improve continuously when you don't have this habit imbibed in you?

Important is, to understand how we work, how human mind works. Let me ask you this - How did German technology reach at such a level of excellence that we now blindly trust it? Or how an improvement tool like "Lean Manufacturing" developed when there was nothing to refer to about Lean Manufacturing? How did an extraordinary medical science called "Ayurveda" come into existence? You see, human mind craves novelty. It's difficult to focus on one task for longer period of time. Look at the children and you will realize this. But answer to the above questions is - this cannot be a result of efforts of few years! It takes decades and decades of commitment, focus, passion, courage and perseverance to stick to what you are doing, and then improving continuously. In India, there is a saying which means - peeling off the skin of a hair. This is used when you want to say that someone has such a nasty habit of asking too many questions for getting more and more details that it ultimately frustrates you. I think this saying is being used unjustifiably. Because the people who question the current situation only can generate the idea for improvement. German technology has evolved because dedicated people have spent their lives to improve a single component or an assembly. Lean manufacturing must have been an outcome of continuous refinement of existing processes. It must have taken painstaking efforts to explore the number of medicinal uses of various herbs for Ayurveda's existence. This is why great people keep saying that improvement is a never-ending process.

To improve, let me suggest a simple idea - Be there. Attend yourself. Attend your activity.

One improves when the mind is 100% present in the moment. You can't stop this from happening if you are 100% there. Mind has to do it. Also, you might agree with me that looking for the problems is also a way of improvement. This is why consultants observe the process when you call them up for improvement. So mind will keep pioneering alternatives. A simple idea can make a huge difference and give you a scope of improvement. Some ideas will come to you when you are focused and some will come when you are at leisure. That is why Einstein used to play violin. You should just keep trying.

Bill Gates has said - " The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."

What we can take from this is - as long as we are here in this moment, we are fine with the magnification of efficiency or inefficiency. Both cheers us up. Right? After all, our business is improvement.

Let us be here and in now. Let us get better.

And do let me know YOUR improvement stories.

Cheers!