Improvement Insights Blog

How to Increase Your Luck

Dr. Richard Wiseman wrote a book called The Luck Factor that describes his research into what lucky people do that unlucky people do not do. I’d recommend it. Here’s the essence:

1. Lucky people create, notice, and act on chance opportunities–synchronicity.
   • Create a network of lucky people
   • Be open to new experiences
   • Have a relaxed attitude that everything will work out.
2. Lucky people make better decisions by listening to their gut feel and intuition.
   • Listen to your gut feel and act on it
   • Boost your intuition
3. Lucky people expect the future to be so bright that they’ll have to wear shades.
   • Expect good luck to continue into the future
   • Lucky people persist in the pursuit of their goals long after unlucky people quit.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.

Sumo Secrets to Obesity

Sumo wrestlers are geniuses at gaining weight. Here, according to Mary Roach, contributing editor of Health Magazine is how they do it:

1. Skip Breakfast – it slows your metabolism
2. Exercise on an empty stomach – it slows your metabolism even more
3. Take a nap after you eat – your body has to store the food instead of use it
4. Eat bigger meals late in the day – your body has to store more food

So if you want to become a genius at weight management, do the opposite:

1. Eat a hearty breakfast – the body needs fuel to boost metabolism
2. Eat a light dinner – the body won’t have any food to store while you sleep
3. Evaluate the short- and long-term effects of any food before you eat it.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.

Confused about causation and correlation (from Seth Godin’s blog)

Have you noticed that in most cities, every time there are lots of umbrellas, it’s raining?

From this analysis, the obvious way to make it rain is to be sure that everyone has an umbrella, preferably a black one, since that seems to be the kind that’s most visible during big storms.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.

Why Retailers Lose Money

My wife ordered a set of monogrammed bath robes for our daughter and son-in-law from RedEnvelope. When they arrived, she checked them (unnecessaryinspection)…no monograms.

So she called (rework) and they told her to keep the two unmonogrammed ones (waste) and they would send two monogrammed ones.

A couple of days later, we did get two monogrammed bath robes (rework). The next day we got two more and the day after that we got two more (waste and rework). When we called (rework), they said, don’t return them because they’ve been monogrammed already.

So now, we have eight robes for the price of two.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog, Lean, Service, Six Sigma.

No Fly Zone

Last weekend, a United Airlines computer glitch delayed and cancelled flights. Even the redundant backup system didn’t work properly.

In a world increasingly dependent on computers and software, IT has been steadfastly resistant to the methods of Six Sigma. While Agile (Lean) programming methods have accelerated software development, mistakes, errors, hitches and glitches continue to plague worldwide productivity. Hardly a day goes by that my PC doesn’t try to install an “upgrade” to some piece of software: Windows, Java, etc.

Sadly, most software escapes rather than releases. Maybe it’s time to start using Six Sigma to optimize delivered software.

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Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.