What is RattL ’em?: We are constantly fascinated by companies, products and services.
So whenever a company catches our curiosity, we offer them an idea (a new product, service, or feature/ improvement idea), or highlight a concern area. Someday, we hope we can send an idea out into the world everyday.
We do this for free, and for fun. And the company receiving the idea is free to use it, with no financial or other obligation toward us. It is our way of trying to be the best in the field of people innovation.
How most food ordering/ delivery service apps work is, you make your selection, pay (or CoD), and confirm the order.
However, there are occasions (or lack of them) where you might want to order something, but without any time constraint.
These instances might include, remembering to order a birthday cake for tomorrow, or have some starters or dessert sent anytime this evening. In such cases, at present, you’d have to remember or set an alarm to place the order in a broad time bracket.
But what if instead, like with Scheduling a ride with Uber, you could simply place the order in advance, and either pick the day, or a broad time within the day, for when the order could be dropped.
It would be convenient to customers who might risk forgetting or risk ordering too late.
Companies could insist on prepaid orders only.
Companies benefit by being able to bunch orders only when a rider is headed in a particular direction, rather than sending them with a lone minimum order in a direction.
Might help marginally with easing traffic, and make rider trips a little more efficient, while being convenient for customers.
***
This Idea for Food Delivery Services was part of an initiative called RattL ’em. What is RattL ’em?: We are constantly fascinated by companies, products and services.
So, every few days, we send out an email to, or share an idea online about a random company anywhere in the world that caught our fancy. The email either contains an idea for a new product or service, a concern area to focus on, or a new feature or improvement to their portfolio.
We do it for free. And for fun. And the company that receives it is free to use the idea, with no financial or other obligation toward us. We think of it as our way to be the best at what we do in the field of innovation and design strategy consulting.
We humans have always dealt awkwardly with time. Some look for new ways to kill it. Others, better ways to fill it.
And the lockdown has really done a number on how we treat time; most likely amplifying our pre-Covid perception of time. So we have either gotten better at killing time (longer binge watching sessions), or a bit more efficient in some ways, to include the added house work (especially in places like India, where a lot of us were accustomed to having house help do a ton of the housework, but suddenly found ourselves needing to do it through the lockdown).
While I toggle between filling and killing time, I have struggled with trying to better manage it. And while I’ve always been aware of how short life is, the number of deaths in the last year have really highlighted the brevity of it.
Here are 4 habits I’ve been toying with in the hope of managing time better; with varying degrees of success:
Instagram on Weekends only: Sometime during the lockdown last year, I saw the crazy amounts of time I was spending daily on Instagram and wondered, “WTF?!” While I would see a good meme or funny pic or a picture that helped me connect two random thoughts together, it still felt like a criminal waste of time. So, I got into the habit of installing the app only on weekends, and uninstalling it on Sunday night. No Instagram during the week! At first, you might feel a restlessness and urge to flip through the app. But that restlessness is not about how important Instagram is to your life. It’s more like life asking you why the hell you’re wasting it on seeing mugshots of people, cars and pets, or funny videos, and not on something more worth your while. Now, I don’t miss Instagram at all, and even forget to install it on some weekends. And either way, Sunday night, it has to go. In case some of you wondered why I take forever to reply to Instagram messages; sorry. 😛
No Social media apps: Apart from maybe a WhatsApp, and any work related apps (like Slack, etc.) get rid of any social media type apps from your phone. Nothing to do with weekends, just get rid of them forever. Check them on the laptop if you must. No app, no temptation to keep checking them.
Don’t Multitask: You’ve probably heard both sides of this. Multitasking is great. Multitasking doesn’t work. Sometime when I started working in the venture capital sector, I finally realized how scattered my attention is. And given the multitude of work tasks, the only solution for me was to run quickly through different tasks. And to multitask. Sure, it helped to an extent. But in the years since, I have also tried ‘not multitasking’. Over time, my verdict is, ‘don’t multitask’. It does not work, because you are half-assing everything, and no one can ever work on or create something they are proud of, with a multitasking mindset. Instead, set limits of 60-90 minutes to dedicate to each task. Do nothing else at that time. Ideally, not even listen to music. And see the difference. The upside to this is also that you’d hopefully become picky (in a good way) about the type of work you choose to do, since it’s easier to focus on work you love, than just random work. Of course, it is easier said than done, and I struggle with it too, but the few times I can, the results justify the effort.
Single Topic Browser Tab: Here’s something that works well if you can stick with it. It is to do with browser tabs. Till recently, I prided myself in the diverse things going on in those 40-50 odd tabs that would be open in my web browser. But I’ve come to realize that it is the equivalent of multi-tasking. So what I do now, is starting with one tab, I limit the tabs to only those relevant to the task at hand at the moment. So for instance, if I was checking LinkedIn, only the LinkedIn page would be open – log in, check, reply to messages/comments, logout. Then if I were to research on some topic, if more than one tab is open, it would all be related to the topic and nothing else. Once I’m done, close all those tabs and move to the next. If checking Facebook is next, same deal – log in, check, logout.
Let me know what habits have been helping you better manage your time.
Last evening, dad shared links to two tweets with me. Tweets from the UN Women and UNDP Asia-Pacific‘s accounts. Both tweets were about challenging patriarchal stereotypes this womens’ day. One of the tweets wondered if design thinking could be used to disrupt stubborn gender norms.
I don’t see why not!
Gender equality has been extremely elusive or random in society for centuries. And I really wonder how much change if any, witty memes and emotional ads can bring about. Because apart from the actual changemakers like organizations that have not blocked truly deserving women leaders from taking charge at their helm, or women of countries who have literally had to snatch their right to drive, and the small changes by individual in society, a lot of the noise is usually channelized by us only around one day in the year.
So thought I’d share a few views. In the hope we can build on them and make some real, everyday change.
Firstly, where do we start? If we’re to look at it from a design thinking point of view, best place to start is by framing the problem/ opportunity statement!
Ideally, UN’s (tweet) problem/opportunity statement is perfect – about ‘dismantling the patriarchy’. But frankly, we all know how we men have been over the centuries. Look at a developed country like the United States. It has been the world’s poster child when it comes to democracy, freedom of personal choice and expression, and a melting pot of world cultures. And yet, they still have not resolved racism, or completely legalized a woman’s freedom to abort, or rid all industries of corporate glass ceilings for women. And what’s worse, in some states, maternal mortality rates are so high, a woman might have better odds surviving childbirth in the back of a car in a third world country. None of this seems to make equality seem anywhere close, especially in still developing countries like ours.
So, while we can all behave naive and think we’re ‘driving change’ by telling regressive men and women to change; in one way or another, I’d rather frame a problem/ opportunity statement that aims at finding faster solutions than waiting for generations to pass, like we have done so far.
So, how about an opportunity statement that goes: How can everyday for a woman be made more well-balanced (as per her individual standard), so that she may live a much fuller and fulfilling life?
And some solutions or thoughts in that direction:
A collective online repository of household or work hacks – women from over the world can learn from or contribute their own innovative ways to balance or reclaim their average day (could be how to use an app differently, or a template to better manage schedules, or a popular service that could help outsource house chores, etc.)
Cook for more than one day – If women need to cook, which often seems to be the case, they could make something for multiple days… (definitely not being pressured to cook once for every meal, as happens in some reserved communities). That way, if the men want more variety in food, they can either cook it, order home, or help with house chores to allow for more time to cook
Mobile apps (already mentioned in the UN article) – that make life more efficient for women, on the work or home front
Changes in a corporate culture are usually far easier to implement than at a societal level. So companies could tweak processes so as to allow women (and especially young mothers) a more flexible schedule if needed. The way corporate culture silently taught underlings to follow the boss’ instructions, we could have corporate cultures where an “express” is added to an request by a young mother. That way, she can complete the project as per her schedule, not having to wait on colleagues, thus reducing some of the chaos in her life.
The entertainment industry should really take it upon themselves to help shift world mindsets. With content they create, and more importantly, with the type of content they choose not to create or showcase.
Feel free to add to this, or get working on one or more of these. If you think I can be of any help with ideating on your change idea, drop me an email or something.
*
If you run or manage a business, and innovation, strategy, problem-solving, customer experience or ideation are areas of interest, there are a few ways I can help. More about it here.
My book, ‘Design the Future’ is available as an Ebook on Amazon, and as paperbacks across leading online bookstores including Amazon &Flipkart. Do leave a review on Amazon once you’ve read it. Thanks!
***
Look forward to your views. For similar topics that encourage reflection and discussion, follow or subscribe (top right of the page). You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
A recent ‘RattL ’em‘ idea was for Note or Planner apps like Evernote, Google Keep and others.
Image: 
