How to keep your closet clean

Look in your closet.  Is it easy to find clothes on your hanger or do you have to push clothes aside in order to find what you are looking for?  If you have trouble finding what you want then your closet rod may be to blame.

Systems like factories or airports work more efficiently when they operate at a level below their maximum capacity to allow for minor disruptions.  A good example is major freeways.  Most freeways always have a spare lane on the right hand side.  If there is an accident during rush hour, the emergency crews can usually move the accident over into the spare lane on the side of the road and sort out the mess while traffic continues to flow.  This does not happen when there is no spare lane like in a bridge or tunnel.  If an accident occurs in one of these locations, traffic comes to a stand still until the accident is completely cleared.

Your closet is the same way.  When your entire closet rod is full of clothes, you can not push clothes aside to find what you are looking for.  You must judge a shirt or dress by the half-inch of cloth that is sandwiched between all the other items of clothing.  To pull a piece out, you must force open some space to get the item of clothing and as soon as you let go, the space is instantly filled.  You then have to fight to put the item back if you don’t want it.

This closet is at maximum capacity

In essence, your closet is operating at 110% efficiency.  There is no room for error and every time you want to see an item you must force open space. 

To solve this problem, closet rod manufacturers should give feedback about the capacity of your closet.  The can do this by adding a Red Zone to one end of the closet rod that covers 15% of the closet rod and the other 85% of the rod should be normal.  When you push all your clothes to one side of the closet rod, no clothes should be in the Red Zone.  If you do have clothes in the Red Zone, you need to clean out your closet. 

When your clothes enter the Red Zone, it is time to clean.

This way, when you are looking for an item of clothing there is more free space in your closet to move your clothes around and you will be able to quickly see the front of your clothes.  Additionally, you can quickly remove an item as well as put it back without fighting the other clothes.  The clothes that you enjoy wearing will be easy to get to and the clothes that take up space will be removed.

By adding a Red Zone to closet rods, manufactures can help your closet operate at an ideal 85% efficiency.  Not only will it be easier to take clothes out and put them back, but it will help you find your favorite clothes which is the whole purpose of a closet.

Special thanks to Jon Glommen for initiating this conversation.

How to stop dropping boxes.

Have you ever handed something heavy to someone and asked, "Do you have it?" and just as they say yes, they drop it?  The reason for this is that people usually wait for heavy things to be placed in their hands and then confirm verbally that they have it so the other person can let go. Unfortunately, as the first person starts to let go, the other person might not really have a good grip.

This miscommunication happens because the verbal feedback provided does not match the physical feedback.  If someone tells you they have the box and yet you are still carrying the weight, there is a mismatch and the potential for an accident.  To solve this, box companies should provide a logo that promotes the concept of "Lift to Accept".

Here is how it works.  When someone hands you a box, instead of saying "I have it", just lift the box out of the other person's hands.  The first person's hands will immediately drop away when you lift the box and there is no verbal confusion.  This works because the first person knows that you have the box because they no longer feel the weight in their hands.  Once this happens, they are left holding air and quickly remove their hands.  By placing the label below on boxes, box companies can eliminate the mismatch between verbal feedback and physical feedback.

Safety Benefits: Catching vs lifting.
In addition to the minimized confusion, there is also a safety benefit to this technique because people will be better prepared to support the weight.  When you are trying to catch something, you prepare for any possible events.  Your feet are ready to move, your knees are bent and springy and your arms are ready to help you run.  Think of a baseball outfielder trying to guess where the ball will go.  Their stance is optimized for movement, not for strength.

An outfielder preparing for anything.

When you lift, you focus on a single event.  You plant your feet, align your body and make sure that you have a good grip.  Think of a weightlifter focusing on a single lift.  They position their body for maximum strength.  This alignment of the body prepares you to lift heavy objects and can minimize injury by trying to carry something in an awkward position.  If you are picking something off a table, you use a lifting response, but if you are catching something, you use a contingency response.  In one case, you are being proactive and controlling the situation.  In the other case you are being reactive and hope for the best.  When you follow "Lift to Accept", you are positioning your body for maximum strength and personal safety.

Arnold is completely focused and in control

The "Lift to Accept" method uses non-verbal feedback as well as better prepares people to carry heavy objects.  By showing customers this method to pass items, box companies can help their customers minimize losses caused by dropped material as well as potentially reduce workplace injuries.

How to save time online.

Most people start their day in the office by reading the news online.  Each person may have a favorite site that aggregates the news   You read the lists of articles and then click on the link that you find interesting.  The problem is that on each news page there are multiple links to other sources of information.

You may start off reading a story about a river rising causing flooding and the page could have an add for river rafting trips.  You click on the link which takes you to a river rafting site.  Before you know it, you are looking at pictures from last seasons guided trips.  This causes you to waste time reading something that you were not interested in when you started to read the news.

A link may take you to interesting pages that are not important.

To solve this problem, browsers like Google Chrome should allow you to set up boundaries on what you read.  Here is how it would work.  You choose one or two sites that you want to read during the day.  Google Chrome should allow you to go to your favorite news sites and to follow links away from the news site.  As soon as you click on a link on the news article that would take you to a third page, the browser would delay the loading of the page by 30 seconds. If the link is really important.  You will read it.  If the link is not that important, you will probably have gotten back to work by the time the page opens.

Google Chrome prevents you from wasting time online.

By setting up the boundaries ahead of time, you make a promise to yourself before you have the temptation about clicking on something that would just waste your time.  This feature would ultimately save you time by limiting your Internet usage to just reading the news during working hours.  The same technique could be used for Facebook.  You could decide that you only want to spend 30 minutes on Facebook during the day.  A timer would keep track each time you log on and would tell you how many minutes you have left.  At the end of 30 minutes you have to wait until the next day to find out what your friends had for dinner.

How to design a car to make it look cleaner.

Have you ever pulled up behind a car and noticed dirty finger prints on the trunk of the car?  Most cars with lighter paint can accumulate a small amount of dirt without looking dirty.  It is only when some of that dirt is wiped off that you start to see how dirty the car actually is.

Without the fingerprints, this car would look clean.

The reason for this is that the human eye can detect contrast much better then it can detect absolute color shades.  Look at the image below.  If you cover the background with two pieces of paper, you will see that the middle bar is the same color from left to right.  The human eye perceives a change only in reference to other colors.

The eye can recognize contrast better than absolute colors.

When people touch a slightly dirty car, they scrape off some off the dust and create a contrast.  This happens to most cars where the back door lifts up.  Most people grab the bottom edge of the door when it is above their head leaving fingerprints.  To minimize the impact of this problem, car manufactures should add a design element like raised trim in a darker color to the bottom edge of the door.  When you reach up to close the door, you would only touch the trim piece instead of the solid color door.  This would prevent fingerprints wiping away some of the dirt and showing that the car is dirty.  Of course, the trim piece would be designed to match the overall style.

A black trim piece that people would touch when they close the door.

By adding this simple design element, a light color car will not have fingerprints on the back door when the car is dirty.  This will make the car look cleaner even when there is a slight layer of dust.  A clean looking car does not have to be washed as often thus saving people time.  Therefore, a small change to the design of the car will prevent busy people from having to spend their Saturdays waiting in line at the car wash.

Do you have any overdue library books?

The library is a great place to get access to books that you will read for a short time and do not want to buy.  This goes for both adults and children.  However, once you bring the library books home they have a tendency to get mixed in with your other books.  Many people spend more time looking for overdue library books then they spend actually reading the books.  Additionally, the late fees may be more then the book may have cost used on Amazon.

Can you find the library book?

The reason that it is hard to find a library book in your house is because it is difficult to tell the difference between a library books and your own books.  This is especially true when you are cleaning up after children.  Most library books have a small white sticker on the spine with the call numbers.  Hardly something that jumps out.  When you are looking for a particular overdue book, you do not want to look for a small white sticker just to find the missing book.

Instead, libraries should use a better visual system to identify their books.  One method would be transparent neon tape that is applied to the plastic cover that most library books have.  Another solution would be to paint the fore-edge (that is the edge of the pages opposite the spine, I had to look it up) a bright color.

The bright orange tape makes the library book stand out.

This way, instead of having to actively look for a missing library book, the book itself would stand out.  Whenever you see a pile of books your eye, would automatically see the library books and you would place these books in a special place.  Then you could always find the books when you are ready to read them or return them.

By increasing the visibility of library books, libraries would make it easier for people to find books at home reducing the number of late returns and reducing fines that people have to pay.  Then again, maybe libraries don’t mind if you return books late.

How do you get salesmen to measure their blood pressure?

For a recent consulting project I was asked to find a way to get medical equipment salesmen to use a particular blood pressure monitoring device.  The problem is, blood pressure monitoring is similar to measuring someone’s weight.  You can’t just run a contest like, “The Biggest Loser” because some people may already be at a low weight and it would not make sense for those people to lose any more weight.  Additionally, there may be particular reasons why it is hard for some people to lose weight or lower their blood pressure.

One solution is to create some incentive for people to use the actual device.  For blood pressure monitoring, people could take their blood pressure and then email the results.  Unfortunately, salespeople are somewhat comfortable providing information even when that information does exactly match actual recorded data.  To enforce integrity, the participants could be required to email a picture of the actual number that also shows some kind of date stamp such as the calendar from a cell phone.

Such methods start to get complicated and more time is spent collecting the data then understanding it.  A better solution is to use the Behavioral Science concept of Overconfidence Bias.  In this bias, people tend to believe that their skills or judgment is better then it actually is.  For example if you ask a room of 20 people if they think they are better than average drivers, more then half of the group will say yes.  Salesmen are particularly vulnerable to this bias.

Here is how the program would work.  Each salesman would be given a blood pressure monitor.  Instead of asking for periodic updates, a contest would be held at defined times.  At the time of the contest, each person would be asked to guess what his or her blood pressure is.  Then their pressure would be measured.  Points would be awarded based on how close the person guesses to their measured pressure.  Under this model, the participants would have an incentive to measure the pressure on their own and to remember that number.  They would also start to learn what impacts that pressure.  Does it go up after coffee?  Is it higher in the morning or in the afternoon?

By creating a competition based on the Overconfidence Bias, the salesmen would not only use the device on their own but they would also have a better understanding of what their own number is and what impacts that number.  Whether the participant chooses to take steps to reduce high blood pressure is up to them but knowledge of a problem is always the first step.

How much money do I need in retirement?

One of the biggest problems facing people planning for retirement is determining how inflation will impact monthly living expenses.  Most websites offer an online calculator to help you find the numbers.  For example, assume you currently spend $3,000 per month on food, clothing, hobbies and rent, and you plan to retire in 20 years.  Using an online calculator, in 20 years at 3.5% inflation, you will need $6,000 per month to maintain the same lifestyle.

The problem is, that these calculators don’t give you an intuitive sense of the time value of money.  What happens if you postpone your retirement by 5 years?  What happens if you retire in 20 years and your retirement lasts 35 years?  Each of these calculations would provide a new number, which you must record along with the scenario.  Behavior Science teaches us that people are better able to internalize data when it is displayed in a graphical form rather then a numeric form.  This is why analog watches are preferred over digital watches and why people prefer stock charts over spreadsheets to view stock performance.

Instead of offering an online calculator that gives an exact number, companies should use a graphical format that helps people visualize a range of numbers that more accurately represents the real world.

Here is how it would work.  First, find your current monthly expenses on the left side of the chart.  Then move your finger to the right the number of years until retirement.  The line that you cross tells you how much money you will need to sustain your current lifestyle assuming 3.5% inflation.  As you continue to move your finger to the right you will see how each year you need a little more money to compensate for inflation.

By using this graphical format, companies can give people a more intuitive feel for the amount of money the person will need for retirement.  In addition, the graph will make it easier to run different scenarios such as postponing retirement or the impact of a long lifetime.  This will help people better plan for retirement and understand that there are no exact answers for retirement planning so you need allow for deviation from your plan.

We will talk later about how much you need to save in order to withdraw the necessary money as detailed in this chart.