Kaizen Headphones
I’m not just the Principal Architect, I’m also a user. Well, sort of. The company I work with, KaiNexus, is focused on bringing many of the kaizen principals to the healthcare world. One of the side effects of working on software that streamlines process improvement is that I am constantly thinking of small things I can change to make an impact on my productivity. These things range from using a trackpad instead of a mouse, setting up hotkey macros and reusable code snippets to simple, non-computer related, solutions like the one I outline here.
Like many other developers, I enjoy keeping my music pumping into my head through my headphones while writing code. Recently I had to purchase new headphones when the pair I was using were completely ruined. One of the things I loved about the old headphones was how small and thin the cord was. It was rarely in my way, it could fit under my keyboard and was barely noticeable.
As a result of breaking my old headphones, several weeks ago I purchased a new pair of Shure SRH440s. They sound amazing, are pretty comfortable and they have a long coiled cord. The cord was one of the more exciting features about the new headphones. It’s compact, doesn’t have to drape across my desk and expands as I move. Great! Or not. I quickly found that while the cord was flexible it was always in my way, it was heavy and I was avoiding using my headphones in an effort to avoid fighting with the cord.
So what does any of this have to do with kaizen? Well, like another well known program, I first had to identify that I had a problem; The headphones cord was always in my way. So how do I fix it with as little effort as possible? First I tried setting my wallet on the cord. This probably would have worked better if I kept tons of money in there, but sadly it was just too light to hold the cord out of my way. Maybe I could lengthen the cord and keep it away from my keyboard area. That's pretty easy.
I added an extension cable into the mix. Finding it to be too long, I tied a simple, loose knot in the extension cable and looped it around behind my monitor. This was better, but the headphones cord was now piled up in my lap all the time and annoying me in new ways. Back to the drawing board.
Then I noticed I had the solution in front of me the whole time! My wife recently bought be a leather wristband to help support the JDRF. It is just big enough to wrap around the arm of my chair with a little extra room. What if I used it to strap the cord to the arm of my desk chair? Let’s try it and find out!
It worked perfectly! After looping the cord under the arm of my chair and using the wristband to strap it in place I now have a usable work area without that annoying cord always getting in my way.
So, with minimal effort and only a couple of iterations, I was able to implement a simple solution that had a pretty big daily impact. And it cost me nothing more than the time to think of the solution and implement it. I already had the extension and the wristband, so no cost was incurred for materials.
What kind of simple or kaizen solutions have you implemented? Post your stories below in the comments section.