Efficiency Is Where You Find It

Efficiency Is Where You Find It was Originally Posted on September 12, 2014 by lavarock

Many many decades ago, I worked for a computer company and helped write a graphics program. (This blog entry will not get very technical, by the way).

The program ran what today looks like those 3-D printers. We had a flatbed plotter with a set of color pens (like felt tipped) that could be picked up, one at a time, and moved to a particular spot on the paper, then dropped touch the paper and moved again. Unlike an Etch-A-Sketch that always has the pen dropped (so to speak), our pen did not always draw.

As you can imagine, a mainframe graphics program was very complex and contained lots of lines of programming code. Customers were using this software to create line charts, bar charts, text and so on. As you drew a pie or line chart, the software was able to take your requirements to fill the area with solid or patterns. The software could also use a set of design defaults to create a chart even if you didn’t know what you were doing. You had the option at each step to take the default value or change it. This the default pie chart might have 3 areas, but you could change that to 12 if you wanted to show, perhaps monthly data.

The software was somewhat unique and customers were happy with the performance as I remember. However, then we came upon a software addon to our computer that made a world of difference. The program could look into your own software program and modify it to add timing information, then display those stats.

Software generally works by having a stream of commands to do this or do that. Those “this” and “that’s” are subroutines that perform a function, such as as “pick up the pen”, “move left” and so on. When we ran this program against our creation we noticed that the routine to determine if the pen was to be up or down was called extremely often. We also noticed that there was a calculation in that routine that had a number of lines of code. We played with that code a bit and were amazed to find perhaps a 30% increase in the speed of the overall program. We gave our software a new version number and rolled it out to customers as “new and improved” at no extra cost! It was very well received!

In our daily lives we may make similar decisions that speed up our processes, without realizing it. Other times we specifically search out ways to improve performance. You may know that at a certain time, it is not suggested to drive into town. Perhaps Friday is a common payday and Friday night a lot of shopping or partying happens. Here in Kona we have a lot of condos and some timeshares. Saturday is a common day for people to start off a weeks vacation and many of the East Coast flights arrive at 4pm or later. That means that Costco is packed from 4pm til closing, because those people feel the need to buy water (thinking we are a 3rd world country I guess) and liquor, thinking they need to prepare to greet a new day in Paradise Sunday often has people buying Hawaiian style clothes, snorkel equipment and slippers (flip-flops).

When I go into town I often need to check prices and find deals, so I go to stores in a specific order on the way to the end of town, then turn around and buy things at the best place. This is a conscious decision to be efficient. A computer friend told me that some people, in order to speed a trip, plan it so that they could take advantage of “right turn on red” to keep from sitting at lights or waiting to make left turns.

People who clean for a living suggest starting at the top of a room and clean downwards, causing dirt and things to fall down where they will be easier to dispose of.

So having the ability to look at a situation, evaluate it and make changes, may help streamline that process. Stockpiling food items can help keep you from having to make emergency trips to the store.

You can become an efficiency expert in your own way, without much work, if you want.