Lean Morning Routines

This post was inspired by dear wife. She called me lazy. Partially that's true, but I prefer to think that I pick my battles. One of the things that I'm really efficient in is my morning routines. After I wake up I make the bed, wash my teeth and other bathroom stuff, eat breakfast, walk the dog and then commute to work for about 30 km using public transportation. Guess how long all this takes?

Well it takes 1h 10 minutes from the alarm bell ring to the point I hit the office. This including ~30 minutes travelling time using train and tram. For the routines at home I use 25 minutes. This is a result of quite a few kaizen activities standardizing. Let's next look at the timeline.

Timeline

5:35: alarm bell rings (my phone). I hate all kinds of snoozing functions. I simply get up and make the bed. Bedroom is in the second floor so I walk down as silently as possible (other members of the family are hopefully still fast asleep at this time.)

5:38: I dress. I usually leave my clothes on a kitchen chair in the evening so they are waiting for me. Then I prepare the oatmeal. It's simply flakes plus water and cooked in the microwave oven for 3 minutes. Usually I've set the oven to 5 minutes and I stop it before it says bling! (And wakes up the kids.)

5:41: While the oatmeal is cooking, I go to toilet and do some standard activities I'm not going to share here except that I wash my teeth and put on some deodorant. Then I go back to kitchen to take the plate out of the oven. Then I pour myself a glass of milk and usually put some sugar on top of the oatmeal. The glass and spoon have standard locations. :)

5:50: After I'm done eating, I put the plate to the kitchen sink. A bit depending on what kind of workday my wife has, I either feed the dog or she will do it later in the morning.

5:55: I go to vestibule and put on my clothes. Jacket, shoes, gloves, cap and scarf are waiting on their places the same way my other clothes were. After I've dressed, I put my dog on the leash and head out. We don't usually go very far. She has learned to do her chores rather efficiently too.

6:00: Time to hit the road! I walk down the hill to the railwaystation. It's maybe about 700 meters. Then I wait for the train.

6:10: Train leaves to Pasila, Helsinki. It takes about 19 minutes. Usually I read during the trip.

6:30: Getting out of the train in Pasila. Walking to the tram stop. This is frustrating part, because the station is currently one big construction yard and I need to circle a long way although the shortest distance normally would be only tens of meters.

6:33: Tram to Kaarlenkatu. The trip takes about 9 minutes.

6:45: At the office. Time to get some coffee and get to work!

Some remarks

• I usually wear really simple clothes. I don't wear suit to office. My standard outfit includes t-shirt, college and jeans.
• I've got rather short hair and I don't use any gel, wax or other stuff. I don't spend too much time in front of the mirror. (Don't know if that's good or bad.)
• Just like in any lean factory, there are standard places for all the things and nothing extra. Also, I like to keep the house clean. The kids can have a mess in their rooms, but the common areas are in neat order.
• Oatmeal isn't ambrosia, but it's healthy. :)
• As much as possible, I try to avoid extra movement. I've planned my route in such a way I don't have to return to rooms too much. Shortest possible path where possible.
• I'm not in a hurry. If I were, I would wake a bit earlier. Actually I could squeeze out maybe 5 more minutes, but I like the "slow morning". :)

Understanding the Whole

When a company is in the middle of an organizational change, it is sometimes difficult to understand your/others roles and the expectations. It's easy to stay with the comfortable old routines and do what you have always done. After all, you know what to do, you have done the same thing plenty of times before.

But here's the catch: what if things around you have changed? Things you know how to do might not deliver the value anymore the same way they used to. Or it can even be that the activity you keep on doing is creating a major pain for someone else in the organization.

Unfortunately I can't think of a good example where organs of living organisms were scrambled, but with organizations this can happen. And then it doesn't really work out well if the lungs still think they are fingers and forget to breath. It might have severe consequences even though they are still able to type like they used to. Like in the good old times.

Break the old habits! If you have been assigned to a new role, check what's really expected from you. Are you a muscle cell doing some heavy lifting or should you be concentrated on thinking about the future like the rest of the brain cells? How does your work affect the whole?