How to Optimize ANYTHING in 5 Simple Steps.

I bet I know what gets you to take your clothes off more than anything else! That's right, you know what I'm talking about! Wait, don't you? Oh wow, come on, get your head out of the gutter, I'm talking about LAUNDRY here! That's right, the old fluff and fold, one of the most mundane things we do in our routine lives. BUT does it have to be? What if you could OPTIMIZE that clothes thing and make it, I don't know, enjoyable? What does OPTIMIZE mean, anyway?

Optimization is making a situation as "ideal" as possible. Making it streamlined, more efficient, more beneficial, more...well, you get the idea. Optimization means different things to different people, but, at the end of the day, the point of optimization is to skew the equation of BENEFITS/COSTS in our favor. So, how do you do that with laundry?

STEP #1: IDENTIFY THE COSTS. This is the bottom half of the benefits to costs equation. Reducing these raises our OPTIMIZATION score. What are the costs in the laundry world? When it's laundry time do you have to hunt high and low for dirty clothes on the bed, the floor, the bathroom, your gym bag? Have you ever looked at a pile of clothes and just NOT wanted to fold it? When you look in your drawer, how long does it take you to find what you want to wear? When you go to hang up clothes in your closet, do you have to hunt for hangers? Does your gut tell you that folding that pile will take "forever"? These are all example of time costs. All costs are really friction points that your subconscious remembers, keeps a running tally of, and dutifully serves up to you in the form of that pit in your stomach when you look at that pile of laundry. It's a threshold of pain that must be overcome to GET THE THING DONE.

STEP #2: IDENTIFY THE BENEFITS. This is the top line of the optimization equation and what gets you excited to move toward action. Without benefits, why bother? If you eventually get around to doing something with that clothes pile, it's because a benefit IS there. Quick analogy. Let's say you come to a tightrope that spans across a deep and jagged rocked chasm. FYI, the deep, jagged rocked chasm are the "costs" identified previously. What would motivate you to attempt crossing it? What if your dream life was on the other side (a positive "move toward" motivator)? What if a viscously hungry bear was at your heels (a negative "move away from" motivator)? Combine these two motivators and you're on that rope. What are the bears for laundry? Maybe you don't want the clothes to wrinkle. You want to avoid a fight with your spouse or roommate, prevent the dog, cat, or kids from rolling in the pile and getting the clothes dirty again before you have a chance to wear them. What's the "dream life" on the other side of the laundry chasm? A couch you can sit on again or a floor you can walk on? Clean clothes that will STAY clean until you can wear them again? The carrots on the stick can be positive (moving toward something good) or negative (moving away from pain) and both are powerful motivators. Side note here, mental health is closely correlated with the ratio of positive/negative motivators. More on that another time.

STEP #3: IDENTIFY THE LEVERS.

These are the variables that we can directly influence and can tweak over time to affect change. In the clothes example, these are all the touch points we have with the laundry, our techniques, habits/rituals, our mindset. Yes, even mindset is a lever here. If YOU can change a thing, it's a lever you can use to affect the OPTIMIZATION ratio.

STEP #4: EXPERIMENT.

You remember the old middle school run down of the experimental method, right? Observe -> Question -> Hypothesis -> Experiment -> Observe -> Analyze -> Draw conclusions? Let's break it down for laundry.

Observe: This step is ALL about noticing. With laundry, and many things, much of our interaction with it becomes subconscious at some point. We do it the way we always have because that is simply "the way" it's done. Observation is about bringing things back to the conscious level to consider the details again anew.

Question: As in, ask A LOT of them. How do I currently fold clothes? Why do I do it that way? Are there other ways? How long does it really take me right now to fold the pile and get it put away? Where do I typically get changed? Why do I have some dirty clothes on the floor in my room while others are in the hamper in the bathroom? Why are my pants always inside out when they come out of the dryer? Get curious about things.

Hypothesis: Let all those questions get you wondering how things could be different. There's gotta be a way to put clothes away faster. Does moving the hamper to a different location make a difference? What would happen if I got changed in a different room?

Experiment/Observe: This is where you start pulling LEVERS and measuring what the shifts the bottom line closer to the dream outcome and further from the bear. Does folding a different way cut down on folding time or add an aesthetic benefit? Both? What if I just threw all my clothes in the drawer without folding them? Does that make it easier or harder to find something to wear later? Did moving a hamper to a different room help more clothes end up in there? to change things and see what sticks, to "relearn" a thing from the ground up and maybe find a better way.

Draw Conclusions: Once you've asked A MILLION questions, experimented, and measured the results, you should have a better idea of what gets you closer to the dream and away from that bear. You start to realize that the closer you get to the dream life on the other side of the chasm, the further away the bear gets and the shallower and less rocky the chasm appears. You've identified several "processes" that make a difference and you realize that getting across that rope isn't as bad as it used to seem.

STEP #5: SYSTEMATIZE.

Now it's time to string the individual "processes" together into a complete end-to-end SYSTEM, a new secret sauce of success to use moving forward. Notice how I used the word "process" in the last section? A "process" is a series of steps/procedures that gets you from A to B, getting across the chasm. A SYSTEM, on the other hand, is a process, or collection of processes, that produces the result consistently, again and again. I don't know about you, but I want to get to the dream life repeatedly, on the daily if possible. This is the equivalent of building a sturdy bridge and putting that bear in a zoo. I'm talking about creating perpetual success. SYSTEMS is the only way to go to make that happen. Since laundry is a regular part of life that isn't going away, it's a prime candidate for an optimizedsystem, and now that you've gone through steps 1-4, you have all the tools needed to do it. HOW COOL IS THAT?! And what's even cooler? Over time with repeated action, this new, optimized system fades into the subconscious background, helping you "win" again and again with even less friction, and your BENEFITS/COSTS ratio is on fire perpetually.

CONCLUSION

Get curious, look at the problem areas honestly. Identify the COSTS, BENEFITS, and LEVERS of influence you have available. EXPERIMENT, and SYSTEMATIZE to light your benefits/costs ratio on fire. Enjoy being optimized. What can I say more?

P.S. I know, I know, you REALLY want to know what my actual laundry system is in DETAIL. Stay tuned for my next post! Ok, so you're not as jazzed about it as I am. Optimize something in YOUR life and then tell ME how excited about it you are! I'd love to hear it! Until next time.