Why you need a good process in life
My Friends and I were walking out of trader joes with our paper bags and I suddenly realized how sturdy and comfortable the bags were in my hands. I didn’t have to adjust my body positioning or lean any which way, it sat perfectly in my arms. Another time at Costco, I was dreading going to the food court because of the usual line and congestion of people standing around. But I saw that there was a self-service line that allowed people to put in an order and get their food within seconds.
Both situations — seemed and is 1st world problems, but they provide a guide for how we should structure our behaviors and solutions for problems, and that’s to create processes that have a smooth and desirable result. When it’s so simple and works, you’ve got something special.
Where to start?
I was inspired to think about processes in my life after experiencing those 2 processes. There are a few companies that do this very well — Amazon with their one button to buy and ship, Google/Facebook allowing you to sign in onto other platforms without creating an account, InstantPot giving you the ability to cook with just a few clicks of a button, to name a few.
This begs the question of what processes can we simplify to make the experience or result stress-free and seamless? I believe it starts with how much time we allocate to an activity or place, and what areas we wish to spend more time and focus on.
It’s a given that each day has a finite amount of time so if we can somehow reduce the amount of time and energy spent on secondary things, we can allocate the majority of it to primary things. A good example is if you’re spending a few hours of your day traveling to work, it might be worth moving closer to the workplace, finding a job that’s closer, or finding a job that allows work from home. This gives you more time to focus on your passions or simply rest. It’s a linear example and of course, life isn’t that simple, but it’s always worth it to make decisions that you can control.
It’s low-hanging fruit to pick examples in your own life, especially those that require you to take action but are a pain to do. Transportation to work is an area in which I don’t enjoy — particularly the sitting in traffic part. On some longer car rides, as all of us are stuck in traffic, I like to veer into the windows of cars and see how everyone is doing (while safely making sure I don’t crash). As you’ve guessed, everyone looks pretty miserable. There are a few that are having the time of their life and jamming out to music, which is a better reaction than what everyone else is doing.
It simply didn’t end when I got home because I had to rush to find street parking, an endeavor that ranged from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. As a child, I longed to be able to drive and have the ability to go anywhere. As an adult, driving is a dread that I only do because of work — I rather walk everywhere. Of course, there’s also all of the insurance, gas, and maintenance you have to do on a car. Once I saw the numbers, I knew I had to somehow make the process of transportation better, or at least stress-free.
My options were to get an electric base vehicle (scooters, bike, car) or a moped (they’re also called scooters on the mainland). An electric car would make me run into the same problems listed above but would save me some gas. Scooters and bikes would save me insurance money and parking, but it was too slow. The moped satisfied all of my needs and more. With the moped, I could get to work faster by using back roads, and home too. Maintenance was affordable, basically, $30 for a full check-up every 4–6 months. No insurance costs as well. The best part was only spending $5 on gas every week and a half for a full tank.
I felt foolish for not making the switch over quicker, and there is the obvious weather factor for driving such an exposed vehicle, but with all of the benefits and problems it solved for me, it’s given me time back to work on the things I want to do instead of wasting it on traffic and finding parking.
Don’t forget the goal
As we continue to look for different processes to improve or eliminate, the primary objective is the same, which is to give us more time to work on something else that’s important. I think of it as building your own personal recipe book. When you just want a reliable meal and don’t want to spend so much time figuring out what you need, you can always go to a recipe you’ve made before and whip out a delicious meal. A stress-free process that you can do with ease because you’ve done it so many times. You know how long it’ll take and where to go for these ingredients so the result becomes predictable.
This becomes important when you have other things to do like a deadline, or you’re just short on time. You’re now in control and can have the mental bandwidth to make important decisions elsewhere. That’s why many people resort to fast food — they make it easy through convenience, price, and stress-free (albeit the line). But with a little more effort, you can have a more nutritious and fulfilling meal if you spend more time on your process.
I recommend copying methods that work if you’re just starting out. The irony of thinking about processes to improve is that they’re stressful and time-consuming, as with all things as you start from scratch. If someone has a similar problem to you, why not just copy their solution and see if it works for you? That’s what makes the internet great — the solutions are there for us, we just have to go find and apply them. It’s what makes reading so powerful because you learn from all of the mistakes people make and gain the wisdom to not repeat them.
It wasn’t until I realize how important good was that I saw a blog detailing the importance of getting the best stuff for where you spend the most time at. If you know you’re spending a lot of time in bed, get a good bed which will lead to better sleep, which turns into better recovery, better mood, etc. There’s no merit in suffering in silence when a better option is available. After you’ve copied, feel free to innovate and create your own process. If you can improve upon a process, by all means.
There’s an unspoken requirement to continuously refine and adjust your processes if you go on this path. I learned this the hard way when I thought it would be a great idea to create email templates and send them out to all potential employers. At first, it worked great and I got many interviews. But luckily, an employer reached out and told me that all of the recruiters I reached out to all knew each other, and they shared how they got the exact same email from this one person. They suggested I personalize the emails just to make sure I don’t look “lazy” and “unoriginal”. I was flabbergasted because what I was doing felt innovative. No one had time to type out similar messages to all of these people, but it was essential to realize that these recruiters didn’t want to get “played” like that. Once I added a bit more effort to my emails, the responses would return and the conversations even got better, leading to interviews and job offers.
You can copy all you like, but like any process, you still have to take time to sit down and update what’s outdated. Tim Urban, from Wait But Why, has a beautiful illustration of constantly updating your wants and goals:
I can’t say this enough when it comes to processes but you need to stress-test the heck out of it. Remember that you’re not married to any particular process just because it works. It has only worked so far, and that’s the key phrase *so far*. Our curiosity to take it to another level and our recognition that such systems will be outdated should drive us to constantly create and refine.
I’ve had an outdated process backfire on me when I came to be in the wrong job industry. I was working in a corporate office and had many methods of making it “seamless and stress-free” — such as finding ways to get to work quicker, shortcuts for all of the spreadsheets I had to do, having a script to talk to our vendors, and upper management so I could have more time to work on other things, etc. I forgot to take a good look at reality and update my wants, and every day at work made me more and more miserable. In a sense, I was doing everything right — hitting all of my work metrics, and getting along with everyone, but I wasn’t happy.
It turns out it doesn’t matter how good your process is unless you apply it in the right direction. It’s like swimming away from land, even with perfect technique, you’ll eventually sink. It’s important to step back and ask if you’re even going in the right direction everyone once in a while. Hard work towards the wrong thing leaves you with mostly regret.
With each decision, you get to learn a lot, and I like to argue that it’s preferable to learn about the most important things and to focus on them than to focus on the things that don’t matter as much. Your processes should help you achieve those main goals. You’ll end up much happier doing things that you care about anyways.
Until next week,
Scott
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