For most corporate jobs, all employees have some sort of badge or verification item that they have to wave across a scanner in order to access a building. At Intel, we have a badge with a bar code that we wave across a sensor which then blinks green and unlocks the door. For about three weeks I’ve been clipping my badge to my pocket and then removing it to scan each and every single time I walk past a sensor. Then after I finish scanning the card, I have to fumble around and reclip the badge to my pocket.
As you can imagine… it’s a huge waste of time. Especially if I’m holding a binder, laptop case, and a drink. Very hard to hold 4 things at once. So I went to the Intel museum store and bought myself an attached clipon extender which lets you clip your badge to an extendable/retractable string. It allows me to pull my badge as far as I want to scan it and then release it upon which it retracts back to the clipon extender. Very convenient.
It only took a few steps to walk to the store, spend $1.00 and now I’ll have a hassle-free summer. What a great ROI (Return on Investment).
While this seems like a no-brainer, it’s strange that I can’t apply this concept to the rest of my life. I’ll leave a dish out after I finish eating and watch as weeks go by and it begins to look absolutely disgusting when I could have simply washed it right away and had a clean dish and a cleaner room.
Sometimes we have to sacrifice to get a decent ROI. But no one likes sacrifices. We’d rather take the lazy way out.