When I think of Consistency, One-Piece-Flow always comes to mind. Our preprogrammed, or default nature is to batch things, and most of us think bigger batches are better than smaller batches, which is the exact opposite of One-Piece-Flow. I’m not saying you can’t be consistent with your big batches, just that human nature is to get bored with doing the same thing for extended periods of time, and so our consistency sometimes falls by the wayside, and sometimes just the sheer size of the batch makes us procrastinate, thus not being consistent with our efforts towards completion.
Bookkeeping is a great illustration, as so much of it is typically batched. Most of us batch our tax preparations yearly, accounts payable monthly, and payroll weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, but when it comes to receivables, we tend to move very close to one-piece-flow (because we want earned money in the bank as soon as possible).
What if we consistently did all these things daily? What would our typical day look like? Would it improve our outlook? Would it reduce the chaos? Would it reduce our stress level? Would it reduce our anxiety? Might it reduce the chance of burnout?
The older I get (hopefully based on gained wisdom), the more I lean towards one-piece-flow, and try to avoid batches, especially big batches of anything, and the by-product of one-piece-flow seems to be consistency, and the by-product of consistency seems to be success.
