New Color, Who Dis?

Andrew Neyer

Feb 22

Learning to See

Are you color-blind?

According to the Internet, only 0.5% of women are color-blind, versus 8% of men. I have no idea what causes this; I haven't looked into it. But, in 2012, I heard an incredible Radiolab episode titled, Why Isn't the Sky Blue? that blew my mind about the perception of color.

In the episode, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich trench through the history of color-blindness, or rather blindness to the color blue. They begin with researchers who have combed through ancient texts and charted how many times the authors mentioned different colors. Over and over, they see extensive usage of the colors black, white, red, yellow, and green. But, no blue. Some hypothesized that the authors, themselves, were color-blind. After talking with neuropsychology professor Jules Davidoff, he has a different take. He studied people in the Himba tribe who could not differentiate blue from green. Davidoff faults the language. He points out that our ability to see color is dependent on having a word to describe it, "When we decide to put colors together in a group [and then a name], what happens is that now that there's a category for that thing, the thing in that category jumps out. It gets louder and louder to your eyes. The category actually feeds back on your perception, so you notice it more."

I had a similar experience when I first learned about Waste, as Taiichi Ohno defines it. Ohno, an industrial engineer, was responsible for creating the Toyota Production System, which became the basis for Lean Manufacturing.

He identified seven Wastes we tend to hide in the workplace:

1. Transport

2. Inventory

3. Useless Motion

4. Waiting

5. Overproduction

6. Over Processing

7. Defects

Like the Himba tribe, I didn't have the word "waste" to define these actions. Before reading about Ohno and his system, "efficiency" was my vague way to describe this pursuit. Efficiency, at its core, is the ratio of the useful energy delivered by a system. This definition is true, but we tend to focus on useful energy by highlighting what we can add to increase that ratio.

Sometimes we better understand concepts through contrast. In Color Theory, the relationship of contrast is seen in Complementary Colors. A complementary color is the opposite, or 180º away from another color on the color wheel. These opposing colors create the highest contrast. For example, blue's Complementary Color is orange. Therefore, orange is the highest contrast to blue.

If you want to make the color purple more orange, make it less blue. If you want to make your life more efficient, omit Waste.

We can improve our productivity or efficiency ratio simply by changing our focus to eliminating Waste. As a result, the system becomes more efficient. Ohno devised capacity = work + waste. This formula may seem obvious, but if Work is green, then Waste is red. They are the opposite. The fastest way to make our lives profitable or increase our capacity is to make them less wasteful. Trying to solve life's problems by adding more and more and MORE and hoping it will someday pay off is exhausting, but the bigger consequence is that our lives then scale tremendously. When we focus on eliminating Waste, our profit ratio immediately improves without needing to scale. If successful, we can have highly profitable lives while consuming minimal resources.

To illustrate one facet of Waste, think of something we commonly Overprocess; dirty dishes, email, or those dull scissors in the drawer. We spend too much time "doing the dishes" mainly because we do them wrong. We pile them in the sink, which is more difficult to handle, prone to breaking, takes up washing space, creates one big project vs. many individual jobs, and often turns into debt. A dirty dish is best cleaned immediately after it is used and loaded directly into the dishwasher (which uses far less water than handwashing). Plates can often bypass the sink entirely by scraping the food you should've eaten into the bin. Don't stack 'em! (or you'll have to clean the bottoms of everything now too. Ugh.) One-piece flow. Scrape a plate, load a plate. The sink is to wash soiled dishware, not stack your neglected dish debt. (Neglecting tasks will always require more work, and now you'll depend on new motivation to tackle the compounded chore because your mom's in town, or you cannot find a clean spoon!) The sink is for washing dishes. Keep it clean and empty. Get outta here soggy cereal in thick yogurt milk buried under plates of papier-mâchéd noodles!

Email isn't that different. Empty that inbox and keep it tidy. First in, first out. Send direct, thorough emails that don't need a reply. Don't give others your chores. Instead, solve problems in real-time over the phone and email data, file attachments, and simple confirmations.

Dull scissors are unsafe, waste time, make you work too hard, and pull your hair out because obviously cutting it isn't a viable option. So instead, spend your next lunch break shopping for a pair of scissors that you love and will last 100 years. Of course, they will cost more money, but it will be worth it. You love these scissors; remember, it will be harder to misplace them, and they will always be sharp. Better tools do better work.

Waste shows up as friction. When we remove friction, our work becomes smooth and enjoyable. Seth Godin says, "The best way to complain is to make it better." Make problems visible. Unfortunately, waste is an obstacle that likes to hide out of sight. If we want to profit, we must learn to see the color Waste.

I am proposing that there are other colors we do not see because we have not defined them accurately. These definitions or redefinitions create distinct shorthand and strengthen our ability to communicate as a tribe.