Second Cup: Do your processes reflect your past or your present?

Make sure your regular rituals still make sense

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to consider whether your processes at work and
at home reflect your current reality. If you are doing

(00:25):
something now that was useful in the past but isn't
any longer, it might be a good moment to update things.
You can save yourself an incredible amount of time. Today's
tip comes from a TED talk by Salvator Calli, a
partner at the Boston Consulting Group. Callie's TED talk focuses

(00:49):
on workflows that waste time and how to streamline or
eliminate them. He asserts one of the best places to
find waste is in a company's processes, because they usually
reflect your company's past more than its present or future.

(01:10):
These legacies are massive waste generators. I think we can
all think of processes that have outlived their usefulness. Maybe
a daily reporting process made sense in an all paper world,
but it is inefficient or unnecessary when so many things

(01:31):
are digital. Or maybe you've got a procedure that worked
when you were all in the same office as your team,
but now you are distributed across the country. A process
that worked for your kids ten years ago may feel
limiting because kids grow and change too. If you are
feeling pressed for time and want to be more efficient,

(01:55):
see whether there are processes in your life that you
can update. For instance, maybe you have long been a
believer in doing a small load of laundry every day.
That may have been helpful when you had four little
kids at home plus you and your spouse, but doing
laundry every day may not be necessary if most of

(02:17):
your kids are launched and no longer live at home.
Or maybe your team started having a fifteen minute zoom
check in every morning in April of twenty twenty when
you were all scattered due to the pandemic and you
were all adjusting to remote work, that may no longer

(02:37):
be necessary in a hybrid environment. Or in general, I
tend to think people can do their jobs without daily
check ins. Or maybe you are accustomed to saving fifteen
percent of your income for retirement, but you have actually
reached the target dollar amount you need to have, so

(02:59):
you may be able to stop saving so aggressively and
have a little room in your budget for travel. If
we want to live in the present and plan for
the future, we don't want to waste time on things
that only made sense in the past, So from time
to time, review your processes at work and at home

(03:23):
to make sure it all makes sense. If not, it
is time to move on and free up that space
for something else. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.

(03:50):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(04:12):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.