I recently used Goldratt's Evaporating Cloud to save myself £200 - in about 5 minutes.
Please note: This blog entry is about the magic of the Evaporating Cloud technique, it's not really about ipods - they're just an example. I wasted years knowing about the cloud technique but not using it and I want to help you avoid the same ...
It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I had nearly convinced myself that I needed a new 30G Ipod.
I currently have an Ipod Shuffle - which I got as the "free gift" for joining audible.co.uk - and 99% of the time I am happy with it. I love that I can download and listen to books when I'm driving, walking or flying, especially since some books are far easier to listen to rather than read. I also like that I can carry some of my music around with me - the radio stations don't play much Neil Diamond nowadays.
But, but, but ... at times I HATE MY IPOD SHUFFLE. Somehow, every so often, it manages to forget its place in an audio book and I have to manually relocate my position - not easy on a 7 hour long book. To be fair to apple, the shuffle isn't built for audio books, so shame on audible, I guess, for offering it as a "free gift". I also hate that I have to keep charging the shuffle using my laptop and that I must transfer music to it from itunes (which I have come to dispise - aren't apple supposed to be good at software user interface design? And, how come I can't download a song from apple's servers more than once, rather than have to do my own backups? Are Apple turning into the new microsoft?).
Anyway, I had almost decided that for my birthday I wanted to get one of the fancy new 30G ipods. My main motivation was that it should overcome the shuffle's usability issues and that it would work easily with my existing Itunes music. In other words, it was the easy option. But a couple of things were holding me up - one was that Ipods are relatively expensive and low spec'd compared to their competition and the other - the main objection - is that I HATE that APPLE HOLDS ME HOSTAGE because I've bought some songs already using Itunes and I can't simply transfer them to other music software. That really pisses me off.
So, I spent about 3 weeks dreaming of a new Ipod ... I can't tell you how many times I sat, drooling, with my mouse hovering over the "Add to Shopping Basket" button on Amazon.co.uk or how many early Monday mornings I spent in the airport's "duty free" shop with hand on wallet. During the recent warm summer lunch times, I even found myself glancing at the pretty girls ipods rather than the pretty girls. Most disturbing. But every time I got close to buying a new Ipod I reminded myself that it was a lot of money for a gadget from a company I was learning to dislike.
It took me 3 weeks before I realised that I even had a conflict. When I did, I ate my own dogfood and drew the following conflict cloud:
Then I followed Goldratt's rules and quickly wrote out the assumptions under each of the arrows. I won't list them all here - since they're described in the text above - but a funny thing happened when I wrote down the following assumptions under the B -> D arrow
In order to "(B) Easily buy and listen to music" I must "(D) Buy a new 30G Ipod" because:
- The big ipod shouldn't lose it's position like the shuffle does
- It's annoying when the shuffle loses it's position
- The big ipod can be charged seperately without needed to be plugged in to my laptop
- It's a bit inconvienient to charge the ipod
The funny thing ... was that by the time I'd scribbled down the assumptions, my desire for a new Ipod had gone - evaporated, to use Goldratt's term. It was funny because I didn't make a logical decision that I didn't need an Ipod. I didn't read through the assumptions and logically decided that my "need" for a new ipod was actually just a weak "desire" which some how I'd become fixated on. In fact, I didn't even read through the assumptions, I just wrote them down and realised that the need had gone, that the conflict was evaporated. It's only now that I write this that I realise that my brain just decided that the suffle wasn't all that bad - at least not so bad that I'd spend over 200 quid, to replace it.
Three more weeks have passed since I used the cloud and I still have no appetite or desire for a new Ipod.
If you are intrigued by the Evaporating Cloud technique then the best way to learn it is to try it. It takes about 5 -15 minutes to draw your first cloud. Depending on the problem it may take minutes, or even hours, to evaporate the cloud and remove the problem. If you want directions then email me.
