What do you delete before you automate?
When a tool or a ritual at school feels too heavy, too slow or too expensive, we run the same five steps, in the same order, every time. Automation comes last. Bringing something back is cheap, carrying it along is expensive, and that is exactly why deleting comes so early. The first step asks about the requirement itself, in the sense of first principles: an idea proves itself against what is fundamentally true for children and their education. Who decided it has to be this way, and what happens if it goes away. Every requirement needs a name and a reason, or it is just a rumour. Kaizen and first principles hold constitutional rank in the handbook, and this improvement algorithm is their practical form. What fails that test gets deleted. Simplifying and accelerating come next, and automation comes only at the very end. This order is a well known algorithm from Elon Musk in manufacturing, adopted in the handbook as an applied principle, not as our own invention. Deleting still counts as more effective than automating.
Five steps in a fixed order
The first step asks about the requirement itself, in the sense of first principles: an idea proves itself against what is fundamentally true for children and their education. Who decided it has to be this way, and what happens if it goes away. Every requirement needs a name and a reason, or it is just a rumour. Kaizen and first principles hold constitutional rank in the handbook, and this improvement algorithm is their practical form.
What fails that test gets deleted. Simplifying and accelerating come next, and automation comes only at the very end. This order is a well known algorithm from Elon Musk in manufacturing, adopted in the handbook as an applied principle, not as our own invention. Deleting still counts as more effective than automating.
Existing things have to justify their place again and again too. In the monthly review we check every tool and every ritual against its reason. What no longer has one is cut, even if it is familiar. Effort, habit and pride do not count as a reason.
What this means for a company
The same order applies before an AI department takes over a process. First the requirement, then deleting, simplifying and accelerating. Only what survives these four steps earns an agent at the end. Anything else would be technology built around something that should not exist at all.
On record
Paideia handbook, chapter 20: The school that is never finished. Section 20.5 added on 13 August 2026, sections 20.1 and 20.3, status September 2026.
- The improvement algorithm in the handbook sets five steps in a fixed order: question the requirement, delete, simplify, accelerate, automate
- Deleting counts as more effective than automating
- The Zimbel-Automatik and the Heureka tools came about this way: lived manually first, then built
- Existing tools and rituals have to reprove their reason to exist in the monthly review
This note keeps growing
2026-09-02: Planted from the improvement algorithm in the handbook.