Adrian Trenholm

Get sorted with the five Ss

June 12th, 2005

This ties in with Rosa Say’s clutter busting personal productivity project and with my part in Lisa Haneberg’s 2 Weeks 2 Breakthrough project . Lisa has suggested that participants might “get wickedly organized for a full goal assault on Monday AM.”

So as I binned and sorted through my files this morning, I found a long lost note to myself (oh, the irony, the irony), detailing the 5Ss approach to manufacturing productivity. Don’t be put off by “manufacturing” - this will work anywhere. The 5Ss are:

1. Seiri : tidyness. Throw away all unwanted, unnecessary or unused stuff. Don’t fret about throwing things away, the goal is to get even the essential items to a bare minimum.

2. Seiton : keep everything in the right place. Keep the tools you need accessible, hide materials you don’t need regularly. Return things to their places after use. Goal: every single item has its own place, and each place is labeled with the name of the item it contains.

3. Seiso : keep your space clean, remove all traces from the previous task before starting the next. Goal: keep everything clean enough to make a good impression on a surprise visitor.

4. Seiketsu : develop a personal sense for organizing your things and maintaining cleanliness, both of yourself and your environment. Develop routines, optimize your system according to your needs. Use all five senses to spot things that are out of place or unclean, so that you can correct them.

5. Shitsuke : stay disciplined doing the above. Elimate the bad habits and make the good habits your permanent practice.

If you feel uncomfortable with the Japanese, then you can always use some English synonyms:

1. Sort
2. Set in order
3. Shine
4. Standardise
5. Sustain

I don’t remember where I saw this first (so apologies to anyone who feels ripped off) . Update : I think I made my long lost note after a visit to Blog before you think! I am reminded of this by the list of 5S-related links over at LifeHack.org .

If you want more, there’s a good write up of the 5Ss here and a company called Enna provides all kinds of resources for implementing 5Ss in the office .

Entry Filed under: Getting Things Done , Workflow