JWIW, NGE, and BGE

These are three abbreviations I just made up this morning, in the course of going about some domestic kaizen.

The abbreviations stand for:

Just What I Want; Not Good Enough; Barely Good Enough

I have noticed out there in the world, observing people, that oftentimes, the JWIW thing degrades rather quickly into the NGE thing.

This, I believe, is due to a combination of two things:

• the creeping dissatisfaction instilled in us by industrial capitalist consumerist society / supremacy culture;

• and also, on a positive note, the natural human urge to engineer and improve upon things.

So, when making something, or setting up a process or system in my household, I have taken to starting with a BGE version. (This is analogous to the business concept of MVP, Minimum Viable Product.)

And, using the BGE version, I then make incremental improvements over time as I feel drawn to.

This approach has the advantage of radically reducing cost and labor. It also fosters creativity and resourcefulness, as opposed to feeding into that old familiar creeping dissatisfaction.

As always, I welcome your thoughts! If you have tried something like this, or if you have noticed this kind of thinking pattern, how is it going for you?