A Deep Sorrow for Waste

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. This sheet is the humble offspring

of a desire to bring to a single place all things about living life to the full, the art of prioritisation, Lean Management, time management, business performance improvement, the sweet science of Quality Engineering (yes I know, the boxing fans may raise an eyebrow or two but a bit on the similarity with boxing later), inspiring others to grow and become the person they ought to be and by the same try to live by what I speak about.

I am a husband, a father of two, an electronic engineer by training, a quality engineer by vocation and a continuous Improvement Analyst by profession.

If I had to restart, the only change I would consider would be to trade the engineering degree with a course in psychology or behavioural economics. This is simply because the human soul is more mysterious and complex than the most intricate assembly of transistors and circuitry that power our supercomputers and many pitfalls, I encountered out of pure naiveté would have been avoided.

And why such a melodramatic name for a blog you would be intitled to ask, “A Deep Sorrow for Waste” Why?

Very simply, I was inspired by the story of a small Japanese town of 1500 souls that eradicated the generation of rubbish including domestic and commercial refuse through sheer audacity. They had something like 30 categories of waste and recycling and each household and business in the community would sort, wash and bring their rubbish to the collection centre, clothes are hand me down, kimonos are recycled into teddy bears. They quite rightly gained the label of Zero-Waste Town.

A deep sorrow for waste because … most of us spend 10 hours or more sat in traffic every week just to get to a place of work.

A deep sorrow for waste because … once at the office a good 80% of the time is spent on processing emails, attending meetings with dubious outcomes, compiling reports that have nothing to do with decision making process, adding to, correcting or waiting on information or on an equipment performing below par. The Lean Practitioners in the audience may cringe and protest that a good 98% of a working day is waste(A bit on this later.)

A deep sorrow for waste because… once home we do fall in exhaustion into Netflix’s embrace where a myriad of dopamine drops of flicking images nurse us into unconsciousness while neglecting the important relationships one should be building every day.

A deep sorrow for waste because… of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, linked in, WeChat, Instagram, YouTube, Google+; these incredibly powerful tools for connections and creativity bind us to a screen thanks to infinite scrolling technology. By the way, whoever came up with the infinite scrolling has officially made an entry in history books beside that nephew of Sigmund Freud (non the least) that made tobacco companies millions of dollars of extra profits by convincing millions more people to start smoking cigarettes after rebranding them the “Torches of Freedom”.

A deep sorrow for waste because... if you ask the man in the street the top 10 activities, they genuinely enjoy spending their time on, they quickly realise that, though most are very simple endeavors at reduced or no costs, he has not managed engage in any lately.

A deep sorrow for waste is a catharsis via rambling we have found to adjust my mindset away from passivity and irritation for the benefits of the people in my world. Rambling my way to sanity. However, you will encounter the occasional lucid description of continuous improvement methodology that can help alleviate some of the pains in your work environment as well as hopefully in your personal life.

We hope you enjoy this journey as much as yours truly enjoyed tracing it.