Efficiency....what methods do you use to make a job go easier?

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Kern Dog

Kern Dog

Build your car to handle.
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Years back, I had a boss that tried hard to be efficient. I worked in construction where sometimes the profit margins were made or lost on how productive the employees were.
Ron made it a point to use all the materials that we could to minimize waste but that was just the tip of the iceberg for him.
One thing that he also encouraged was to not waste your steps.
Example: You are driving the forklift and going back and forth between the work site and the lumber cut and storage yard. If you needed to get another unit of plywood from the yard, look around for something that needs to go back to the yard and take that with you, then return with the plywood. His thoughts were to avoid driving the forklift unloaded unless it was the only way. This saved time and fuel.
That principle stuck with me.
I called it avoiding wasted steps. Don't walk over the same path multiple times without doing something.
At home, I always try to carry something with me to the kitchen or garage if I'm heading that way for something.
While I am up, I'll let the dogs out or do something else that might require getting up again.
With cars, that "efficiency" has led to what some call mission creep, the snowball effect, (like how a snowball increases in size when rolling down the hill) the "while I am here" syndrome....
While you have something apart, it does make sense to fix other surrounding things because it is open and right there.

What levels of efficiency do you use that save time and trouble?
 
I can't do that anymore. I've gotten so damn old that it just doesn't matter, and if I get too tricky about multi tasking I end up getting sidetracked. Just the other day I had to go in the house into the basement to get a tool, and grabbed something else that needed to go back down there. By the time I did that and put it away, I'd forgotten the real reason I'd gone down there.
 
Having started working in manufacturing/ assembly line work right out of high school it didn't take long figure out how to utilize every second and not waste motion.

Fast forward several decades I carried what I learned early on in every aspect of my businesses and life. You can always make money, but you can't replace the most

important commodity in life, TIME. Most people never really think about time because they feel they have an abundance of it. Which is not true.

Successfully and accomplish people just understand how to use their time better than others.

I operate everything I do on 3 legal size notepads. One for daily, one for monthly, and one for yearly.

Organization and the will to follow through it is what separates the doer's from do not's.

Tom
 
Comedian Dave Attell had a comedy bit that went something like this:

I was on the street the other day looking left, then right when a man came up to me to offer some help. Hey man, are you lost?
Now, this man hadn't bathed in quite awhile and looked terrible. He only had one tooth and he wasn't even trying to take good care of that....I figure if I'm going to ask for directions, it wasn't going to be from a guy with ONE TOOTH, it would be from the guy with ONE LEG. He knows where the short cuts are and there won't be any stairs either!
 
My approach is that if you "multi-task", you don't do any of the tasks to the best of your ability. However, much of my work involves computers that may take some time. So if I "initiate" a time consuming task and do other things, I can give the other task my full attention. Pre-planning is paramount to what I do. I have to consider all tasks ahead of time, then figure out when to implement them. I see your focus and agree with your end-game. Just be cognizant of the fact that there is a time to "multi-task" and a time to "focus".
 
Thinkers aren't dinkers and motion is money.
Wasted motion is wasted money.
 
metal music and get after it. I am constantly coming up with ways to make my job easier.
Same with at home and life in general.
It's hard for me to not find a solution, at work it's more like if I run out of work then I don't get paid but I like showing the 21 year old kid at work other ways of doing stuff and talking to him about his thought process and then share mine.
My boss really gets a kick out of it lol
 
mpgmike said:
My approach is that if you "multi-task", you don't do any of the tasks to the best of your ability. However, much of my work involves computers that may take some time. So if I "initiate" a time consuming task and do other things, I can give the other task my full attention. Pre-planning is paramount to what I do. I have to consider all tasks ahead of time, then figure out when to implement them. I see your focus and agree with your end-game. Just be cognizant of the fact that there is a time to "multi-task" and a time to "focus".
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I would have to disagree a bit with the multi tasking comment. I have sometimes 10 jobs going a day , boring and honing blocks, valve jobs, surfacing, cleaning, assembly, disassembly,
All kinds of stuff.
For me, it's all about timing. I look at my work load in the morning and within 5 minutes a plan is made, most of the time someone comes up and interrupts the plan but at the end of the day all 10 of those jobs are ready for customers to come get it.
I have had 0 comebacks in 3 years.
I try not to let a weekend get in the way of some big projects because my memory is way older than I am lol
 
I have found that cleaning up here and there as I go and putting away tools that I am done with as I go is a big help to me. When I spend all day in the garage cutting, fabbing and welding (or whatever), I can have a pretty bad mess at the end of the day. A mess that can take 45 minutes to clean up. But if I do it a bit here and there, the cleanup is a lot less at the end of the day. And at the end of the day, when you are tired, would you rather have a 20 minute cleanup or a 45 minute cleanup staring you in the face?
 
Absolutely agree on having a clean shop. If my shop is disorganized, I tend to waste a ton of time looking for things through the clutter.

When I was a chef, one of the chefs I worked for used to walk up to anyone who had a messy station, smash his hand into their cutting board or countertop and show them the crumbs & bits of food that stuck to the palm of his hand. He'd say, "This is what your mind looks like when you're messy. Work CLEAN!!"
 
Righty Tighty said:
Absolutely agree on having a clean shop. If my shop is disorganized, I tend to waste a ton of time looking for things through the clutter.
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I've got that figured out......I have multiple sets of stuff. When I put something down, I don't waste time looking for it if I need it again. I just get another out of the tool box :)
 
CFD244 said:
I've got that figured out......I have multiple sets of stuff. When I put something down, I don't waste time looking for it if I need it again. I just get another out of the tool box :)
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I am the opposite of efficient but I'm not getting paid to do stuff in my garage so it's fine. My shop and benches are always a mess to the point where I can't find stuff if it's put away.

When I was a dealership tech I had no choice but to be efficient. If there was ever a situation where time is actually money it's definitely in that situation. It made me a different person because it was my livelihood. I wish I still had that same drive because it takes me way too long to do stuff now.

Repetition and habit is the best way to become efficient at whatever you're doing. Doing anything the first time always takes longer than subsequent times.
 
To answer the original question a little bit better - I'm definitely guilty of creating the snowball effect. Being a perfectionist/overthinker with textbook ADD does not help that trait at all. I can't replace/build/fab/restore something and put it into something that is dirty/crusty/rusty. No way. I tend to think about every last detail 17 ways to Sunday before I am willing to commit to whatever it is and call it done.

Over the last 10 years I have lived that dysfunction with my Duster. At this point he only thing I have not touched on my car is the vinyl top and exterior paint. If I hadn't cared to make the underside, trunk and engine bay clean I probably would have been a lot farther along on it.

I also tend to stop individual projects 3/4 of the way through them which is a really bad habit. If I could finish whatever I was doing 100% then I have no doubt I'd be farther along in my build. It's really inefficient to have multiple half-done projects.

I have plenty of examples of that. Earlier this year I made all new transmission cooler lines and mocked up the new cooler under the trunk pan. I got almost all the way done with it except one last section over the rear wheel arch. It's been like that for months. Same thing with my brake lines. They have been 80% done but one last section is still unfinished. I started that job last year.

My wiring project has been the worst for that. The problem with that particular item is that it kinda needs to go in before everything else. Before I can even think about really putting the car back together in earnest the wiring should be done and in.

Alas, I've been looking at a half-done harness for almost two years. It's taking up huge amount of space on my bench. if I could complete it it would be a huge step forward. But I keep thinking about different ways to execute my ideas or some caveat comes up that I hadn't considered and it makes me switch directions for the umpteenth time. Analysis is paralysis.

Or the interior of my car. I got 3/4 of the way through fabricating a rear seat delete panel and firewall but stopped short of completing it. Been that way for over a year.

All that stuff is at a standstill though because I switched directions and decided to rebuild my engine. I started on that this summer and I'm almost done with it. We'll see how long it takes me to finish it.

Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.
 
rmchrgr said:
To answer the original question a little bit better - I'm definitely guilty of creating the snowball effect. Being a perfectionist/overthinker with textbook ADD does not help that trait at all. I can't replace/build/fab/restore something and put it into something that is dirty/crusty/rusty. No way. I tend to think about every last detail 17 ways to Sunday before I am willing to commit to whatever it is and call it done.

Over the last 10 years I have lived that dysfunction with my Duster. At this point he only thing I have not touched on my car is the vinyl top and exterior paint. If I hadn't cared to make the underside, trunk and engine bay clean I probably would have been a lot farther along on it.

I also tend to stop individual projects 3/4 of the way through them which is a really bad habit. If I could finish whatever I was doing 100% then I have no doubt I'd be farther along in my build. It's really inefficient to have multiple half-done projects.

I have plenty of examples of that. Earlier this year I made all new transmission cooler lines and mocked up the new cooler under the trunk pan. I got almost all the way done with it except one last section over the rear wheel arch. It's been like that for months. Same thing with my brake lines. They have been 80% done but one last section is still unfinished. I started that job last year.

My wiring project has been the worst for that. The problem with that particular item is that it kinda needs to go in before everything else. Before I can even think about really putting the car back together in earnest the wiring should be done and in.

Alas, I've been looking at a half-done harness for almost two years. It's taking up huge amount of space on my bench. if I could complete it it would be a huge step forward. But I keep thinking about different ways to execute my ideas or some caveat comes up that I hadn't considered and it makes me switch directions for the umpteenth time. Analysis is paralysis.

Or the interior of my car. I got 3/4 of the way through fabricating a rear seat delete panel and firewall but stopped short of completing it. Been that way for over a year.

All that stuff is at a standstill though because I switched directions and decided to rebuild my engine. I started on that this summer and I'm almost done with it. We'll see how long it takes me to finish it.

Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.
Click to expand...
I have been guilty of perfectionism, body work & carpentry. Now with more experience I find a happy medium.
 
Even when on foot in construction, I tried remember to grab nails or lumber on the way back from the porta potty. No empty handed trips meant fewer trips and more time working.
 
Applying fertilizer at 150mph from dozens of airports in several states every year takes solid PLANNING. It may apply to other kinds of work.
 
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