One of my principles is kaizen: continuous improvement. If you can make your life 1% better every day, you’ll double your life’s awesomeness in less than three months. Even if you improve life by 0.01%, you’ll still do pretty darn well over time. Today was one of those 0.01% days. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.

You see, I often ride my bicycle to work. This means maneuvering my long-framed bicycle through the mudroom, out the door, and down the porch stairs. The door has two parts: the actual door, which opens inward, and the screen door, which opens outward. If I roll my bicycle near the door, then open it, the door often gets stuck in front of my bicycle. If I open both the door and the screen door, one of our cats usually slips out and starts exploring the porch. (I’m looking at you, Luke.)

Today I had an epiphany. If I open the house door but not the screen door, then I can get out more easily and I don’t have to worry about the cats slipping past. This is what it looks like:

Yes, I know, obvious, but I managed to get through one whole year with this bicycle without having that aha! moment, because I always thought of door-opening as an integral operation: open the house door, then open the screen door. Close the house door, close the screen door. Even though we sometimes leave the house door open and the screen door closed to let in summer breezes, it didn’t click until I stopped and thought about why I was getting stuck in the bike room.

Little things like that are the cruft of un-consciously moving through life, and it’s so much fun to fix them. So many opportunities for improvement everyday!