No matter how hard you work, there’s a limit to how much time you have available. Whether you adhere to a strict 40-hour work week or find yourself in a cycle of all work and minimal rest, the hours at your disposal are finite. This means any time you spend working on something is by definition time that you are not spending working on something else. So, if you can figure out a way to do something faster, that frees up more time to work on something else. 

The absolute fastest way to check something off your to do list is to simply delete it. Just don’t do that thing. Or as Elon Musk would say: delete, delete, delete. This isn’t about shirking responsibility. Instead, it’s understanding that not every task warrants your time. By eliminating the unnecessary, you free up space for work that genuinely requires and deserves your focus.

My favorite quote from Bill Gates is “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” It’s all about deleting things that can be deleted and only focusing on the important stuff.

Be Reactive, not Proactive

Over and over when I was younger, I was told it’s important to be proactive. Actually, I’ve found it’s often better to be reactive. If you’re considering being proactive about something, think about how important that item is relative to the other items on your to-do list. Maybe there’s something more important, or maybe it doesn’t need to be done at all. Or maybe it doesn’t need to be done for a long time. I’ve had items sit on my to-do list for years before I get around to them. This isn’t something to be ashamed of; rather, it’s a badge of honor! It means you focused on other tasks that had a bigger and more timely impact.

This ties in with a principle in software development called YAGNI (You Aren’t Gonna Need It). It means that tasks deemed urgent may, in fact, be postponable or unnecessary.  

The Recency Effect

Another thing to keep in mind is that whatever task lands on your plate today, your brain will automatically think it is the most important thing to work on. In psychology, this is called the recency effect. To make sure you have the right perspective, try setting aside the task for a few days before allowing yourself to start on it. By the time you revisit the issue, it may no longer feel as important as it once did. You may decide you can postpone it, or even delete it.

This is not to say there’s never a time to be proactive. Before you get started though, think critically about the task you’re starting on. Is it really more important and time-sensitive than everything else on your to-do list? If you’re unsure, ask! You probably have a co-worker, manager or customer that can let you know.

Avoid Re-work

Avoid re-work if at all possible! Any time spent re-doing work is wasted time that could have been applied to other important tasks. Make sure you’re 100% clear on what needs to be done so that you won’t have to re-do work. A small amount of time understanding exactly what needs to be done can save a massive amount of time by avoiding re-work.

Listen to Your Subconscious

If you find yourself having trouble focusing on a task or you’re procrastinating about something, stop working on it immediately. This is your subconscious telling you something is wrong. Maybe you don’t have all the information you need to accomplish this task efficiently. Or maybe you have an inkling that the task is perhaps not very important. Just move on to something else you’d rather work on. This approach has a bunch of benefits:

1. You’ll feel better and less stressed
2. Since you feel better, often you’ll find yourself switching from being unproductive to productive!
3. You may eventually discover the task isn’t important and can be deleted
4. It may be that you were unsure exactly what needs to be done. Clarifying this before proceeding can help avoid the possibility of rework

Practical Examples

If you’re having trouble configuring your computer, rather than spending 2-3 hours on it, spend 2-3 minutes. If you’re unsure, ask a coworker that already has it set up, and they can simply give you the answer. Don’t feel guilty about borrowing a few minutes from a co-worker in a scenario like this. Think about the overall productivity of your team. If a co-worker can save you a couple hours of work, then you’ve made a net win for your team.

Similarly, if you have trouble duplicating a bug report, don’t spend hours trying to duplicate it. If someone entered the bug, they already know how to duplicate it! Just ask.

If you’re unsure whether or not you should work on something, ask your manager! They won’t mind giving you a quick yes/no answer, because if they’re a good manager they’ll know that checking in like this is a big time savings for you, and a net win for the team.

Try to think out of the box for easier ways to accomplish a problem. For example, we used to waste hours and hours trying to configure SQL server to work on our Mac computers. After fighting with this for years, we finally decided to just set up a SQL Server instance in the cloud and have our developers connect to that instead. All that time spent configuring things is now gone.

Use better tooling. If you find yourself performing repetitive tasks, think about ways to automate those tasks. If you’re unsure the best way, ask your team! Maybe someone else knows.

On the flip side, rather than trying to automate everything, consider if you can accomplish the task faster by just doing it manually. If it’s unlikely you’ll need to do the task again, then a manual approach can sometimes be faster than an automated approach.

Conclusion

The essence of productivity lies not in doing more, but in doing less—more precisely, doing less of what doesn’t matter, so you can do more of what does. It’s not about filling every moment with action; it’s about ensuring that each action counts.