When I lectured at the University of Wollongong in Australia, I realized we had a problem straight away. Class started at 08:30 and over 50% of my students were late. How annoying! So I decided to give the class a practical lesson in TQM.

The first week, I told them to write down everything they did from the time the alarm went off until they sat in the classroom every single day.

The next week I told them to do the same, but to also track how much time they spent on these things.

The third week, I asked them to add up the amount of time they spent on each activity from when their alarm went off to when they sat down in class.

So what could they do with all this information? Well, if the sum of all their activities was 90 minutes they could do the following (or some combination of):

1. They could count backward from the class start time of 08:30 and set their alarm accordingly. That way they could get up at 07:00 and make no change to their habits.

2. They could try to reduce the 90 minutes by doing things in parallel e.g. brew coffee while taking a shower. That would reduce their total activity time and allow them to sleep longer

3. They could remove activities from their routine and sleep longer e.g. laying out their clothes and packing their bags the night before.

In this situation, the students’ goal was arriving on time for class. TQM techniques were the tools for making the necessary changes to achieve that goal.

NoLimit uses TQM methods because, in our experience, it’s one of the most effective ways to make meaningful, constructive changes. The nice thing is that the changes that improve your life, don’t always have to be major. Sometimes, a few small adjustments can mean the difference between failing or reaching your goals. Why not try it and see if it works for you?