Economy of Motion
by: Michael Escalera



There is a saying that goes something like this, "Those who fail to plan…plan to fail". Those words of wisdom are so true for many aspects of our personal and business life. At the beginning of each year we all seem to come up with thoughts and ideas for the months ahead, but how many of us actually implement them? Even if we do start implementing new ideas into our lives, how long do we successfully continue using them?

This year, perhaps one of the best decisions you can make to manage your time, reduce pollution, and lower overall costs is to have a daily plan of action. We call it economy of motion.

It's something I was taught at a young age by my parents, and to be honest, it makes good sense! The principle is to combine energy and effort so that more can be accomplished with less. To put it in practical terms, here is how economy of motion relates to daily life.

For our business, if we have packages that are ready to be shipped Wednesday afternoon and we know more packages will be ready Thursday and early Friday morning, we will wait until Friday morning to ship all of them together. This saves the energy, time, fuel use, and pollution from what would have been three separate trips. Imagine how much savings this would add up to in a single year! It doesn’t take long to see the savings add up and we’re not referring only to financial ones. By planning your days ahead of time, your productivity will increase dramatically!

The concept sounds simple but it can be difficult to implement if you don't plan ahead. You can help this policy work in two distinct ways:

1. Manage your client’s expectations
2. Forecast needs and plan your time wisely

Managing your clients' expectations is crucial to using economy of motion. One of the most common questions we get regarding this policy is: doesn’t "delaying" packages when they are ready to go affect our clients? The answer is no – it doesn't affect them at all! We inform our clients that it will be approximately four weeks before they receive their order. When we receive an order, it is always processed within two business days (and back from the lab within another three business days). We then package the order and place it in the queue for shipping. Even if it doesn't leave our studio with other packages for two to three days, we are still two weeks ahead of schedule from when the clients expect their order. We would never jeopardize our relationships by needlessly delaying orders; but by managing our client’s expectations, we can save energy, time, fuel use, and prevent pollution by this simple workflow model.

The next way to implement this policy is by forecasting and planning your time wisely. When we know on Tuesday that packages will need to be sent on Thursday, we start to plan our other needs around that trip. Whether it's office supplies, on location meetings, or a quick personal grocery run, anything that we can combine into one trip is fair game. We are saving a large amount of effort by having multiple errands accomplished at one time, which then frees us to do other tasks.

Economy of motion is a simple task that can translate into savings for your time, health, finances, and very importantly, help prevent needless pollution of our environment. Just think of what an impact it would make if everyone thought this way!

DISCLAIMER : The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of photographik or any member of the photographik organization.