Respect for Time | An ethic of respecting time such that wasting it feels unacceptable. |
Time Strengths | Time strengths are character traits, knowledge and skills that are beneficial to the effective use of time. For example, a strong work ethic. |
Time Pressure | Creating time pressure in order to try to increase creativity or productivity. For example, a manager who creates a sense of urgency around an issue such that people devote more energy to it. |
Time Boxing | Setting a fixed amount of time for an activity so that it doesn't become a time sink. |
Attention Span | Increasing your attention span with diligence and practice. |
Priority Queues | Creating a large list of things you'd like to do and prioritizing them such that only high priority items are actioned. This queue can grow very long with the expectation that it will never be cleared. |
Flow | Flow is a state where you are completely focused such that work and concentration feel effortless. This is easily disrupted such that creating an environment with no distractions is critical to sustaining flow. |
Sustainable Pace | Pacing work so that you can continue at the same pace forever. For example, not staying up late whereby you are essentially borrowing from tomorrow to get something done. |
Long Game | Working to win in the long run may create far more value with your time than being focused on immediate satisfaction or gains. |
Right Place | Reducing needless movement, travel and transport. For example, reducing the length of your commute or working from home when this makes sense. |
Right Value | Focusing on areas where you add the most value. For example, a brilliant coder who refuses a promotion to management where their talents will go to waste. |
Right Levels | Stocking what you need so that a lack of resources never disrupts your productivity. For example, an artist who stocks ample art supplies so that they are never out of something in the middle of their creative flow. Overstocking such as a cluttered workshop can also reduce productivity. |
Right Quality | Doing things right the first time so that you don't need to repeat it. Quality can also go too far into perfectionism and waste significant time. |
Right Planning | Avoiding overplanning or under-planning. |
Right Preparation | Preparing things such as your workspace before you work. Again, this can be overdone and end up wasting more time than it saves. |
Right Cognition | Avoiding overthinking or not thinking enough. For example, a student who learns to stop worrying what other people think because this is consuming their energies. |
Right Communication | Avoiding the temptation to talk / message at length when getting to the point may be better. Under-communication can also waste massive amounts of time such as a manager who fails to communicate expectations resulting in weeks of setbacks. |
Right Cooperation | Avoiding the temptation to socialize every decision or make work cooperative when your individual effort will be more productive. |
Optimization | The process of measuring, improving and measuring again. For example, a carpenter who makes small changes to a task they complete thousands of times a month in order to try to make it a little faster, safer or better. |
Reinvention | Challenging processes and procedures to try to find some leap forward. For example, a student who reads textbooks for upcoming classes in their summer break so that they will get more from lectures from the start. |
Fail Well | Experimenting in ways that will fail safe, fast and cheap. For example, starting a small business on weekends before quitting your day job. |
Defensive Pessimism | Using pessimism in a strategic way. For example -- does this make any sense at all? How is this going to fail? |
Capital | Surrounding yourself with efficient machines, equipment, tools, vehicles, environments, software, infrastructure and other capital. |
More With Less | Reducing things to their essential complexity. For example, reducing the number of software tools that you use such that you can mostly use a single platform that is usable, fast and powerful. |
