A bachelor—who lives alone in his apartment—woke up one Monday morning to find that his only tube of toothpaste was almost fully flattened out. That was the point at which he would usually have thrown it out and taken out a new one, but it turns out he had forgotten to buy any more, and so he decided to make the most of what was left. He used the end of his toothbrush to squeeze out a portion big enough to serve his need for that morning. He forgets to go shopping that day as well, and again manages to squeeze out enough toothpaste from the same tube for that night. This goes on for another four days. Finally, the weekend arrived and he had time to go shopping!
A friend of mine was telling me this story from his own experience, saying how lazy he was getting to be. But I was wowed by something totally different: look at how a tough situation brought out the best in him in terms of efficient utilization of available resources. According to that story, he normally wastes about one week’s worth of toothpaste in every tube, just because another one that is easier to use is readily available! Now, look at toothpaste as a mere metaphor and think about how often we do the same elsewhere in life, especially in the office.
Let’s say you have two pages to print, that you usually prefer one page per sheet of paper, and you decide to print only on one side. But when you have just one sheet of paper left to print those two pages, you will compromise and print on both sides of the paper. You decide to use the available resources more efficiently.
So why don’t you just do that all the time?
