Value
Let's say you want to cook rice. To make the example easier, let's make it plain rice: just rice and boiling water.
When the rice is in contact with the boiling water,it gets cooked. In other words, in that moment value is created. Everything else around that contact, (even if it is what makes that contact possible) is waste.
Waste must be eliminated. Value must be enhanced. Let's play a little bit with the factors.
Let's say that you live in a planet where there's no water. To get a pot of water for cooking, you have to trust in smugglers who charge astronomic prices to go to the other extreme of the galaxy. After you place your order, you have to wait 6 weeks, and hope that the guy on the mission wasn't caught in a space control.
All of that is previous to the water being heated and meeting the rice. All of that is waste.
Now let's say that you have a regular planet Earth kitchen with running water. In it, you have to walk eight steps to grab a pot, then five more to go to the tap and fill it, and then three more steps to put the full pot on the heating surface. All those steps are waste, too. Of a different magnitude than in the previous intergalactic example, but sharing something in common: they all must be fought, reduced and eliminated; they don't add value to the product. The guy who will eat the rice couldn't care less about how the water for the rice was obtained.
This concept applies to any process, including the creative one. I'll go again with Ian MacKaye's definition: the value is created when the music falls into someone else's ears. That someone else doesn't care if you had to stay up all night to get the riff for the song's bridge, or if music just keeps coming to you naturally even as you sleep. He doesn't care if the crystalline production was obtained after 7 hours of tinkering with a compressor, or if it was all a happy accident put together in less than 3 minutes. It is us, inside the kitchen, who should be concerned about all those burdens, and aspire to destroy them every day, so we can concentrate more and more on what matters.
When the rice is in contact with the boiling water,it gets cooked. In other words, in that moment value is created. Everything else around that contact, (even if it is what makes that contact possible) is waste.
Waste must be eliminated. Value must be enhanced. Let's play a little bit with the factors.
Let's say that you live in a planet where there's no water. To get a pot of water for cooking, you have to trust in smugglers who charge astronomic prices to go to the other extreme of the galaxy. After you place your order, you have to wait 6 weeks, and hope that the guy on the mission wasn't caught in a space control.
All of that is previous to the water being heated and meeting the rice. All of that is waste.
Now let's say that you have a regular planet Earth kitchen with running water. In it, you have to walk eight steps to grab a pot, then five more to go to the tap and fill it, and then three more steps to put the full pot on the heating surface. All those steps are waste, too. Of a different magnitude than in the previous intergalactic example, but sharing something in common: they all must be fought, reduced and eliminated; they don't add value to the product. The guy who will eat the rice couldn't care less about how the water for the rice was obtained.
This concept applies to any process, including the creative one. I'll go again with Ian MacKaye's definition: the value is created when the music falls into someone else's ears. That someone else doesn't care if you had to stay up all night to get the riff for the song's bridge, or if music just keeps coming to you naturally even as you sleep. He doesn't care if the crystalline production was obtained after 7 hours of tinkering with a compressor, or if it was all a happy accident put together in less than 3 minutes. It is us, inside the kitchen, who should be concerned about all those burdens, and aspire to destroy them every day, so we can concentrate more and more on what matters.
