《零秒工作》读后感

本周阅读 - 日本作家赤羽雄二的《零秒工作》Speed。尚未阅读本书的姊妹票《零秒思考》，稍后再分享。 

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I would say that this book is quite convinving given the author's extensive experience working in McKinsey and having established Mckinsey company in South Korea.  

As the name of the book entails, it specifically looks into how to think, act and work with speed.  Of course, it does not discredit the importance of quality.  Speed entails a clear sense of urgency and a sense of wrapping up things with a conclusion.  I try to analyze myself why speed is important from psychology point of view and I suppose the following could explain: 

* To cultivate a sense of urgency is more onto having assignment organized, sorted, and dealt with in an organic manner.  For people with fast city life pace, it is the drive of getting things done and crossing off the to-do-list that is giving out the sense of fulfillment and make life run.  Behind could be the pursuit of a meaning, i.e. being important and needed to any non-self party.  

* Pyschology studies people's emtions; this book addresss the know-how to generating positive emotions at work.  Believe it or not, the beauty of thinking weighs so much high that one just cannot ignore the side-effect it brings to people, even it is just 5-five minute brain exercise.  If you pull the thread of thoughts in the book together, you will appreciate how finer details the author has tested and proven effective for his readers.  

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Three impressive skills that I definitely will apply are: 

01. A4 paper note taking: amazing and worth much of a practice till you get a grip of it.  I started using it from yesterday with 3.5 sheets including one mindmap addressing a work organization problem.  This morning I finished 4 exercises including one for my cleaning maid - notes for her to share her experience at work and become a future trainer in the company she works for.  

02. Email handling - I am a procrastinator at email handling.  There are mixed and somehow confusing feelings behind when it comes to me replying emails.  Bugs like "am I responding too soon", "I'll flag and handle later", "I just do not feel like writing back", etc keep flying around me.  Well, skills provided are: check emails 20-30 days a day (me checking 7-8 times only) even with small intervals, respond emails very fast to build expectations and trust, set aside time for complex message composition.  

03. PDCA cycle - I must say that I belillted this tool although I always know about it.  The name of PDCA comes from the acronym “Plan , Do, Check, Act” , and is also known as the cycle of continuous improvement or Deming Cycle (because the name of its author, Edwards Deming). This methodology describes the four essential steps that should be carried out systematically to achieve continuous improvement , defined as a continuous way to improve the quality of our products and processes (decrease failures, increase effectiveness and efficiency, problem solving, avoid potential risks … ) 

The Deming Cycle is composed for four cyclic steps , so that once finished the final stage we have to start again with the first one, and repeat the cycle again. Doing that in a company,  the activities are reevaluated periodically to incorporate new enhancements . The application of this methodology is primarily intended to be used for companies and organizations, but you can also use it in any other situation, such as parenting.  

Anyways, never too late to learn and apply.