How to Make Things Faster

Chapter 111. Optimizing for Kids

This Richard Feynman quote is important to me:

If you can’t explain it in simple terms, then you don’t understand it.

I also like to share problem-solving stories with my family. It’s good practice, and sometimes they find the stories interesting. Especially when it’s companies whose names they recognize, like Amazon or Apple or 7-Eleven. When my kids were little, I played a game with them to help them understand what their Dad does for a living. You might enjoy playing this game with your family, too.

The game begins with the premise that when Mom goes to the grocery store, it takes only about half an hour. But one day, Mom wasn’t home and Dad had to go buy the groceries. And it took him almost four hours! Eight times longer than Mom. Wasted half a day. This—no doubt—is a performance problem. A serious one.

I ask them to pretend that they’re performance consultants who’ll get paid piles of cash if they can help fix this problem for me. So I ask them how they’d begin helping me. Here’s what happens: they start shouting out ideas for how to make my trip to the grocery store faster. Before they have any idea how I do it. This is hilarious, because it’s exactly what the grownups do! They can’t even make it through listening to me say what the symptom is before they start shouting out recommendations for how to relieve it.

So I coach them a little bit. And it’s hard. I try to get them to think about the big picture of “What process are we going to ...