Like most parents I have a morning routine that gets followed if I want to get my daughter to school on time, there is very little variation to the routine otherwise things go wrong and we miss the school bell. Of course, we could just get up earlier I suppose and have extra time to sit around but that just seems a little wasteful.
When I get up the 1st thing, I do is give the daughter a nudge, she is 11 so needs a lot of nudging. Then it is off to the kitchen to get breakfast and school lunches ready. This is where the routine really kicks into gear. I must confess to having done a little prep work the night before, in Christchurch where I live, they recently had an issue that resulted them adding chlorine to the drinking water to avoid everyone getting sick and it's not the nicest to drink so we bought a filter jug. The last thing I do when heading off to bed is, you have guessed it, fill the filter jug.
Now we have the list of things to get done, there's toast for breakfast to be made (for the whole family) , a pot of tea, school lunch which will consist of some sandwiches, a handful of various nuts, some kind of sweat snack (usually fudge made by the grandmother) and some fruit, typically a chunk of apple and of course a bottle of water for drinking during the day.
Now I don't know about your toaster and kettle, but I bet there is a set way round you do things since you figured out one is quicker than the other right? We have a 4-slice toaster – we upgraded after agreeing the old one was frankly dead and at only a 2-slice option it was a clear bottleneck anyway. The new 4 slice option is so far proving to be a marked improvement. In our house then, the kettle is slower than the toaster so obviously the kettle goes on 1st then I refill the water jug to filter more water and stick in the toast for the wife and daughter, they like it to cool before adding anything to it (which is just strange). Now is typically a good window to feed the dog.
Now that the toast is on, I can turn my attention to the daughters launch. Step 1 is the apple, we learned (i.e. the wife found out about it and told me it was what to do) that if you slice and apple and then oak it in salty water for 4 minutes it won't rot during the day, and it doesn't taste salty. As it turns out it's 100% correct so the apple is first up, and the timer goes on for my four minutes. I still have time to get the assorted nuts and raisins etc and get them into the lunch box along with the bit of Nana's fudge.
The Toast is now popped so I stand that up to cool and get the condiments sorted just in time to give the daughter another nudge… Now the kettle has boiled and I can make the tea, I like fruit tea's and they have to stand for about 5 minutes to really get the flavour out By now the buzzer for the apple has gone off and it's time to whip that out, dry it off and put into the lunch box.
The 1st batch of toast is now cool (and the daughter is walking through the lounge door) so I apply the spread and peanut butter on and sliced banana, as it turns out the dog also likes banana. The finishing touch to the daughter's breakfast is normally a glass of milk so once that is poured it is time to turn to start round 2.
With my tea still stewing away I stick in my toast which is gluten free so takes a little longer in the toaster (I guess it's just denser) so that gives me time to make sandwiches for lunch and finish the lunch box just in time for my toast to pop. I like my toast hot so there is no standing around it is right on there with some banana and maybe the odd honey one and it is time to relax for a bit.
By this time, it is, again, time to give the daughter another encouraging nudge that perhaps brushing her teeth and getting her shoes (code for go find them!) on while I have my toast.
10 minutes later we are in the car and heading for school, on time, again. The time line looks a bit like this...
What you can see is a mix of jobs that happen in parallel, or attended and unattended jobs. There is a bunch of stuff I can do while the kettle is boiling for example, I do not have to be at the kettle for it to boil once I switch it on, it goes. I can do other stuff like put the toast in, then I can ignore that until it sends a signal I am needed – it pops and so on.
What I have here then is a standard work structure for making breakfast in my house. There are times when I need to do stuff, an order I need to do it in which then results in a pretty predictable outcome (note that for full disclosure we I will agree that the daughter is a variable that is hard to account for, parents you know what I mean here).
That is the point of standard work, it gives you a set of routines that you can follow to get a consistent process and a desired outcome that you can apply anywhere, and anything.
Go on, have a look around your business, your home, what things have you go that could do with a little standardisation.