Newsletter Week 43 | 2021

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Hey there.I hope you've had a great week. I managed to brick my computer and had to completely reinstall everything (including operating systems) - hence you're getting this email today, and not yesterday. While slightly annoying, it was actually a great learning experience.

What I've Made For You

Book notes: The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts by Shane ParrishGreat book on mental models. I liked the style of it. There are more in the series. The website isn't updated — there is a 3rd book on Systems and Mathematics. I'm super excited to read the other 2 volumes. 

How we can apply Japanese Manufacturing principles in our lives

Toyota makes improves to their system more than one million times a year. Imagine what our lives would look like if we improved even a fraction of that many times.

The Toyota Production system (or, Lean Manufacturing in America) embraces the principle of continuous improvement. In fact, they took this so seriously that they will stop production to fix issues.

Toyota implemented a rope which, when pulled, stops the assembly line.If anyone encounters a problem, they're expected to ask for help — even if this means stopping the assembly line. Once stopped, everyone will help solve the problem.But why do they do this? To learn quickly and to solve problems as soon as possible.

This highlights the importance of the improvement of daily work. But how do we apply it in our lives?

I've been working on a personal framework for productivity: The Iterative Experimentation Framework.This framework applies principles from Scrum, Lean Manufacturing, and other frameworks. It's aimed at balancing optimal personal productivity with overall happiness and health.

I'm not quite ready to share it just yet. For now, I'll share some of the principles behind it.

The Principle of Accelerated Feedback

We make hypotheses about what would produce the most value in our lives. These are tested using the scientific method, where projects are the experiments. We want to (in)validate the hypotheses and learn as fast as possible, so cycle time (project duration) is short — 4 weeks at most. This can be adjusted as you test and experiment with your velocity and what works for you.

Limiting time allowed also forces the user to focus and define a MVP for the project.

The Principle of Continuous Improvement

These projects also serve to learn more about the process itself. We make the specific details abstract, so we can implement them in other contexts. The improvement of daily work is more important than the daily work.

The Principle of Continuous Maintenance

We differentiate between projects as being active or maintained. Since projects are undertaken to improve some aspect of your life, they should also have a detailed workflow for maintaining that aspect. A lot of people improve their lives, and then stop doing what they did, only to regress. This is to prevent that.

The Principle of Continuous Building

Projects should always end with some deliverable which should be shared on the internet — embrace Learning in Public. These deliverable can take any form: tweet, video, article, newsletter, and so on.

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To your success. Regards,

Christian Bager Bach Houmann