Gilbreth's Brick Motions, Applied to Your First Ten Minutes Awake

Imagine a bricklayer on a scaffold in 1909. He bends, turns the brick over, reaches for mortar, steps, reaches again. Frank Gilbreth’s Bricklaying System (1909) charts eighteen operations for laying one face brick the old way, then adds that no first-class bricklayer would likely use all eighteen. Some men, it says, could not be broken of “a dozen or more motions per brick.” Your first ten minutes awake hold the same kind of waste.

What did Gilbreth actually cut?

In Motion Study (1911, Van Nostrand) Gilbreth writes that piling bricks face up, top side nearest the palm, saves “an average of one motion” per brick. He says careful study had cut bricklaying work “more than two-thirds,” and Bricklaying System claims two to three times the usual bricks per day. These are Gilbreth’s own claims in books selling his method. I read both on archive.org. The often-repeated “eighteen to five” I saw only second-hand; the chart scan was too garbled to confirm it.

Where does the vest story come from?

Cheaper by the Dozen (1948, by Frank Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey) says their father buttoned his vest from the bottom up to save time. I could not read the book, and accounts disagree on the shaving detail (two razors or two brushes). It is family lore, unconfirmed by his own books.

How do you count morning motions?

Lie in bed and replay the stretch from alarm to both feet on the floor. A hypothetical count: reach, find phone, unlock, silence, check notifications, put it down, sit up, find slippers. That is eight, and four are the phone’s. Gilbreth asked which motions the job needs. The job is standing up. A phone-in-bedroom rule is the blunt way to cut the four, and the nine-minute snooze is a motion that exists because of a gear ratio.

Where does motion-cutting stop working?

Taylorism, the stopwatch management Gilbreth worked alongside, was accused of speeding workers up. Lillian Gilbreth answered from inside it. Her The Psychology of Management (March 1914) argues that scientific management treats the worker “not only as an economic unit but also as a personality,” and it has a chapter on welfare. That is her argument, not proof of how factories behaved. Mornings have a simpler limit. Burke and colleagues (2015) found attention impaired two to four hours after waking in six volunteers, so fewer motions will not make you sharp. For how a cue turns into a habit, there is a fact-check of the Pepsodent story.

DontSnooze gives you 30 seconds after the alarm to record a video proving you are up, and sends a random camera-roll photo to the friends you chose if you do not. My inference, untested: a 30-second deadline makes the shortest motion count the only one that fits.

What is the count-your-motions exercise?

1. Tomorrow, count every motion from alarm to feet on the floor.
2. Mark each as needed or habit.
3. Cut one habit motion, such as moving the phone out of reach.
4. Recount the next day. Stop when the count stops falling.

Questions about counting morning motions

Did Frank Gilbreth really button his vest from the bottom up?

It is family lore from Cheaper by the Dozen (1948), unconfirmed by his own books.

What is the difference between motion study and time study?

Time study clocks a task. Motion study asks which movements it needs.

Should I time my morning or only count motions?

Count first; it needs no stopwatch.