Just in Time Content
One of the foundational books of startup culture is The Startup Way by Eric Ries. This book taught me a lot about creating a lean business and how to test ideas with minimal overhead. You may have heard about MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) which Ries helped popularize.
In this book, Ries talks about the way that Toyota factories operate. In order to cut down costs and inefficiencies, Toyota will receive the materials they need for manufacturing at the exact time that they need them. There’s no need to have a large warehouse full of all of their surplus parts. The supply chain is so well optimized that they receive only the parts they need at the time they need them.
Amazon has also helped bring this to consumers. They’ve reduced the cost and time it takes for products to get to our door, allowing us to wait until 2 days before we need a product, and ordering it then. Granted, it doesn’t do much more than free up pantry space or allow us to procrastinate buying Christmas gifts, but it’s the mindset that counts here.
This idea of “Just in Time” can be applied to more than just supply chains and deliver. What if we treated content the same way?
Instead of spending a majority of the time scrolling through social media or watching another general self-development video, what if you consumed content only when you need it?
There’s a side of consuming content that is reliant on helping you discover new ideas, things that you don’t know that you need. However, if you’ve been consuming content for a while, it’s most likely that you don’t need more content, you need to talk with yourself.
What content do you need right now?
In order to answer that question, you need to know what you’re struggling with. Are you lost on where you want to go in life? Find some life purpose content. Know what you want to do, but keep getting distracted? Find some productivity and deep work content. Maybe you just don’t know what you have to do and need a better task management system. Enter thousands of videos and articles.
What about books? Do you need to read all 273 pages? Or maybe there’s 40 pages that you can to a deep dive on right now to help push your life forward.
Maybe you’re not interested in the whole self-development space. Why not apply this to skills you’re trying to learn? If you’re learning how to build an app, get your foundation down, then learn as you go. Instead of taking a course on how to do everything in Bubble, why not find specific resources to take the next step, but only as you need it?
Sometimes you do really need a deep dive of learning before you can start taking action. But if you take the time to talk with yourself to figure out the resources you really need then and there, you can end up saving a lot of time and momentum in the long run.
Questions, comments, or want to start a discussion? I’d love to know your thoughts! Let’s chat over on this post’s Twitter thread.
