Kaizen 101: Fix Your Computer's Boot-Up Time

You're probably reading today's blog post with some type of smartphone, tablet, laptop, computer. I'm blessed to have the choice of any of these technological products, but sometimes, I get frustrated and annoyed because I can't figure things out, my fingers seem too fat, or my laptop runs too slow!

Thankfully, I have a computer guy, Seth. The biggest lesson I've learned from Seth is that I often try to operate my laptop and computer with way too many tabs open. I've tried to explain to him that I'm using them all... at different moments. Well, according to Seth, this is slowing my computers and my productivity down. I know he's right.

Another problem I have, besides remembering a million passwords, is shutting down and booting up my systems. So, I've learned to take a deep breath and use the time for meditation or prayer.

If you are like me and run a business, then you should be familiar with the concept of kaizen. This basically means making lots of continuous improvements to your business model and workflow so that you'll gradually see exponential gains in your productivity and probably your turnover and profits.

One very simple and highly effective example of this would be to improve the amount of time it takes for your computer to load. Read on and we'll look at why this is so highly important and how you should make it happen.

The Time You've Lost

A good computer should boot up in approximately 1-2 minutes. Bad ones though can take anywhere between 5-10 minutes. And while 10 minutes a day might not seem like the end of the world, it's worth bearing in mind that that's 50 minutes a week. 50 minutes a week meanwhile is 200 minutes a month and 2,400 minutes a year. To put that in further perspective, that's 40 hours a year.

Imagine what you could have accomplished in 40 hours a year!

Now though, apply that to an office full of workers. If you have a team of 20 people, all with computers that take 10 minutes to load, then you've lost 800 hours of work every year! That's like having 33 extra sick days in that year and all the while you'll still be paying the heating bill and rent…

And computers that are slow to boot tend to be slow to run also. So you've probably actually lost much more time than that in reality.

How to Fix the Problem

Hopefully, this has made it clear how important it is to keep your computers running smoothly. To speed up your boot time, you need to delete unnecessary files, run virus checks and malware checks and better yet – get a computer with an SD hard drive instead of a disc. Upgrading to the latest version of windows also makes a big difference.

You should also remove any software you don't need on bootup. This can be done through the task manager in Windows 8.1 and takes about 1-minute maximum. Now that's ROI!

This is one example of how making a very small change can have profound impacts on your productivity, overheads, and profits. Imagine what else you could accomplish if you took this approach in every area of your business?

How's your computer's health? Is it time to take the steps to make it run more effectively? 

From someone that struggles with technology...take a cue from Seth, and spend a little bit of time applying kaizen to your computers!

Until next time...

Cheers!

Lisa