Store Your Work

If you can spend a day automating a task that usually takes five minutes, you'll eventually earn that day back and many more.

There's a famous xkcd comic that illustrates this: Automating a five minute task that has to be done five times a day will save you four weeks of time over the next five years.

You don't necessarily need to automate something to benefit from this approach: Start by assembling the templates, links to important documents, and instructions for common procedures you frequently refer to in one place. This cuts down on the amount of time you need to spend each day looking for (or recreating!) them.

The challenge, of course, is finding a little bit of extra time today to make your work more effortless tomorrow.

When you store your work like this, it pays dividends. And if you reinvest that extra time in getting more done or simply relaxing, your efforts will compound over time as your work gets more effective.