Exercise 11: uniq

There isn't much more to say in the beginning of these last two exercises. You should know how to think about your work environment, how you start, how you sit, everything that impacts your ability to get started. You should also have been busting through that initial starting phase using these tiny little 45 minute projects. If you haven't figured it out yet, setting a 45 minute timer and yelling "GO GO GO!" is a solid technique for making yourself get started. The goal hasn't been to craft stellar work but to just get going.

You should also have a decent lab notebook with run charts plotting how well your improvements are working. There's nothing very scientific about your charts, but they should be helping you understand what might be working and what isn't working. When you use a run chart you'll want to simply look for spikes in either direction and then try to find an "assignable cause" for the spike. If the spike was a positive one, then try to find out why and do it again. If the spike was in the negative direction, then try to find out why and prevent it in the future.

When I say "spike" I mean significant changes. One thing about a run chart is it's supposed to fluctuate. In fact, if it stays stagnant for a few 45 minute hacks, then that's also bad and you should find out why. Normal processes fluctuate and bounce around the mean, and you should only try to find causes for large spikes in any one direction. If you did the "Further Study" from the previous exercise then you can use 2 * std.dev (two times standard deviation) as a line above and below the mean to spot problems.

NOTE: See the video for this exercise for more demonstrations of a run chart. They are much easier to explain visually in a video.