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black iphone 4 on white table iterated on from day 1

The 5 steps of Iteration while organizing

Remember the first cell phone? Giant plastic bricks with huge antennas. Not really portable or cell-like at all and super expensive, but man was it cool to have a phone not wired to the wall. Now, look where they are today! It barely even works as a phone, it’s more of just a computer that has a
 

phone feature. The one you’re probably reading this off of right now is better than the best, fastest supercomputer in the 1990s.

 

How crazy is that, how did it get there? Well, iteration of course.

 

That’s the difficult thing with iteration, it takes time. You’ve got to learn from past mistakes and then make the correct adjustments to improve upon those mistakes. You don’t just go from the brick cell phone to the iPhone in a year. You go brick phone, to a smaller brick phone with an integrated antenna, to a Nokia, then you get flip phones, then flip phones with cameras, then thinner flip phones with cameras called Razers. Then eventually a revolutionary phone comes out like the first-gen iPhone, but even then that needs better, faster internet so then we get the 3G iPhone which is WAYYY better. We need apps though, so, of course, we get an app store. The cameras are not good enough, the cameras are never good enough, let’s put 4 lenses on there with a 4k video and 18-megapixel camera that works spectacularly at night.

 

Before we know it, we’ve got the iPhone 12! It only took 20 years to get there. But without iteration we don’t get the iPhone 12, each bit builds on the next.

 

 

 

Each phone gets progressively better with each new version. Battery life, processor speed, UX design. It takes time and patience to get it to an optimal state if there is such a thing. However, I would argue that the current iPhone today is pretty darn close. If the batteries lasted a week with heavy use I think we could call it in and just stop there.

 

Iteration is about making small improvements to each new version you produce. This allows you to get the product/system/design as close to optimal as possible. If there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that the first way you try something, more often than not, isn’t the best way to do it. However, you can get evolve it into the best way by trying different things out. Sometimes the best solutions come from mistakes, or out of an accident.

 

So how might we use iteration to improve something like our bathroom organization?

 

Step 1 Hypothesis – Organize the bathroom: Just do your best to get it in line. Think about how you currently use things like make-up, your toothbrush, face wash, and other items. Just get it somewhere, whatever you do is fine because it’s likely going to change anyway.

 

Step 2 Test – Set a date: Pick a date to come back to and go through all the systems you created, or maybe just one specific system such as how all your makeup is stored. A good idea is to take note or,at least really try to pay attention to how you use it between when you finish organizing and the date you set to come back to it.

 

Step 3 Analyze – Make your first iteration: On the date you set, take the information you gathered about how you actually accessed things and make one small change to the system. Like maybe you put on mascara before you put on blush, but you tend to have the mascara underneath the blush when it’s stored away.

 

So now either separate those two things or make a mental note that the mascara should always go on top of the blush.

 

Step 4 Loop – Do it again and again: Now just continue doing that process until you feel there are no more improvements that need to be made. The tricky part is that there probably are, but once you’re satisfied, move on to the next system. There’s a point of diminishing returns where more time spent on improvement doesn’t make enough of a substantial improvement for it to be worth the time spent.

 

Step 5 Enjoy!: Now that you have a working system, enjoy it! Take some time now and then to appreciate how well the system works and applaud yourself for the work put into getting it there.

 

The great part about iteration is it can help relieve the fear of failure because you don’t put any pressure on yourself to get it right the first time, not only that, you’re expecting to get it wrong and then make adjustments over time. Doing this mental exercise should help to relieve some of the stress of organizing or creating any system you’re looking to create.

 

At reliefkey, we care about doing valuable work and not selling people fluff in exchange for dollars. We want our work to last! That’s why we offer a free 6-month follow-up after we get a space of yours organized. It’s a whole day dedicated to looking at how you have used the systems we helped you create over the last six months and can then make necessary adjustments after really seeing how you used what we helped you implement.

 

Get started with today us so you can basically get a free $480 dollars? (The 8 hour follow up after we organize any room of your house)

 

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