345

Situation: some little task you do repetitively, you recognise this is a waste of your time, and you can think of how to streamline your workflow to reduce, remove or optimise the task.

Choice: do you:
a) invest the effort to reduce, remove or optimise it, or
b) live with the inefficiency knowing you’ve wasted no time on implementing a solution?

My Approach: Almost always, I will invest the time to optimise now, for the long term fix. When I find myself doing this kind of thing, I coming round to thinking of the behavior as a ‘345’. Three hours of work in one sitting, for five minutes of daily benefit. On balance, I think this is good plan, but I do realise that the system has its productivity weaknesses, that need some careful consideration before creating a 345 or not.
<ul><li>how long will the tweak actually take? It’s always longer than you think.</li><li>how often do you actually do this five minute task?</li><li>can you remember your fix if too much time passes before you use it again?</li><li>is it going to be resistant to task changes?</li></ul>