As mentioned in the first post, Lean Thinking originates and captures the essence of Lean Manufacturing in Toyota Production System. It is a concept of achieving better flows, visualizing and solving problems, and finally reaching our goals.

Lean Thinking not only can be applied in business management, it is also closely associated with our daily life. Through Lean Thinking, we will be able to achieve dynamic improvement rather than statistic efficiency.

Here are some tips for you to apply Lean Thinking in your daily activities which may not just help you save money and time, but improve your overall quality in life.

1. Increase automation

Nowadays, machines and electronics are essential to everyone’s life. Many of people’s daily activities largely involve these technologies.

However, one of issues of these gadgets is that many machines cannot be left alone to do their work and during some cases, people need to standby and watch them all the time in order to make sure they won’t go wrong.

Hence, automation is very important to progressively import human judgement into the electronic process. Less monitoring and hands-on operating will be needed when the machines can ‘self-monitor’ their work. This also creates standardization in your life whereby constantly changing can easily drain up your working energy. Hence, with automation, you will be able to improve efficiency in life.

For example, there are software that can help people automate the project and task monitoring by the use of automatic time tracking. TimeCamp is one of them, which tracks both billable and non-bill project hours and generates invoices automatically. Other than implementing it for team projects, it can also be used to monitor the work activities for individuals. It’s totally free to sign up for the Solo package to track your time and access the app on desktop and mobile devices. Here is a discount link for you to enjoy 10% discount if you would like to upgrade to paid packages.

2. Apply visualization

While words can be powerful and detailed in delivering messages, visuals may be more straightforward and practical in communicating goals.

When there is an image to constantly motivate you towards your envisioned goal or guide you in fixing the current gaps, you will be able to have consistent improvements in your progress.

Having visualization of your goals and current problems helps you recognize the resources that you will need to solve the issues. This will also help you focus on the tasks by understanding the details to be worked out. With the engaging images, you will be less distracted from your target and become more resilient when going through the difficulties.

3. Personal kanban

Personal kanban can work together with visual controls. Visualization will make it easier for the projects to initiate and continuously progress.

In short, personal kanban is to minimize ‘overproduction’ in life and cut out the activities that cause misfit between your efforts and your target. It will also challenge your assumptions about what you need to achieve your goals and your flexibility to make adjustments to the current to-do list.

This also means that multitasking may not be a good idea for many people. While you are no longer overwhelmed by several brain-draining work, life will become easier to manage and you will be able to better organize your daily activities. Hence, you will be able to improve efficiency in life after solving these issues.

4. Appreciate the improvements

Before you proceed with any plan, you need to remind yourself of the importance of patience and consistency. Don’t be afraid to start with something small as small changes can add up to a significant impact. The critical part is to improve continuously towards the final goal that you envision.

Hence, learn to appreciate the improvements and enjoy the sense of achievements in the process. This will become your motivation to continue with your plan where you will be able to make further achievements as you proceed with different short-term goals. While achieving these short-term goals one after another, you will improve efficiency in life along the way.

While recognizing the improvements, there is also a need to constantly reassess your current status and compare it both with your requirements to be fulfilled as well as your final target. Constant revaluation will help you eliminate the deviations towards what you are envisioning and allow you to stay on track without making inefficient efforts.

5. Eliminating waste and reduce mistakes

Creating defects and making disruptive mistakes are something that you will want to try your best to avoid. They will not only cause a serious loss in time and resources, but also bring detrimental impacts to your overall process. Your confidence level will also be affected by these negative instances.

In order to eliminate waste and reduce mistakes, constant speculation can be implemented in the processes. This means constant checking upon the quality of the finished work as well as the functioning status of the working tools. Standardization can also be applied in this situation. The repetitive practices will be performed at a lower cost and at a higher efficiency.

In this series, there are also other articles that discuss about the relevant application of lean thinking in terms of Kaizen philosophy and Six Sigma. Stay tuned and find out!