Think of all the undone things in your life. Unread emails, open tabs, unopened messages, unfolded laundry, movies in your watch list, songs in your playlist. They’re all, inventory. Inventory is the technical term for “shit lying around”. Borrowed from the world of operations (“Ops”), which itself is an intellectual term “squeezing the shit out of labour.” Humans have been building factories for 300+ years now. The current masters of this are the Japanese, who created the TPS (Toyota Production System by Taiicho Ohno); and optimized the shit out of their factories as they conquered global markets with efficiently produced cars. One of things they did was working with low inventory. Toyota works closely with suppliers to get materials and parts delivered just when they need them, often the same day . But why? Why is inventory a bad thing? Inventory is consumed capital, it occupies spaces, its a headache that you must manage (fancy term “overhead”) . You could’ve put the capital in R&D, used the space more efficiently and saved yourself trouble.

NOTE for discerning readers: As Taleb violently reminds us, this is a great strategy for efficiency, but it is the exact opposite of what you want when aiming for robustness. Without inventory, you are now more vulnerable to supply shocks and more fragile overall. This can be applied to life. All your undone deeds are inventory. And the answer is simple too - get rid of useless inventory. You can go to every place where you’ve piled up crap and get rid of it. Nature and the physical world impose automatic limits on how much crap can accumulate. But virtual universe we float in, does no such thing. There’s 2000 Facebook friends to wish happy birthday to, millions of reviews you could read, 1000s of books you can download, without hitting any limits . But the costs are mental and emotional, when you wake up and realise you’re just binge buying books and reading squat.

So, unsubscribe to the marketing mails you don’t read and newsletters you don’t like. Stop buying more books. Read the ones you have. Make the unmade calls to your friends and family . Be honest about who are your actual friends. Stop piling inventory and burdening yourself with an unending list of crap. Live more freely.

You’re not going to get to it, so stop fooling yourself. First accept your current throughput and then aim to improve it.