People are building "sandcastles" over and over again
In general, we as humans do not value our time enough. Everywhere you look, you see people building "sand castles" – in school, at work, in private life. We repeat the same tasks over and over again, without thinking, on how we potentially could improve the whole process in order to either do the repeating tasks quicker or not at all.
Don't repeat yourself
Every time I see this inefficient repeating of tasks, I am reminded of the The DRY Principle Enhancing Code Reusability, Maintainability, and Efficiency. This principle stems out of the realm of software development and is stated as: "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system".
Notice those "sandcastles"
When I think about those "sandcastles" eroding a little bit with every wave hitting them I really feel the urge to not make this mistake with my life – in my private life as well as wishing my professional work. We should try to recognize those "sandcastles" and try to not just keep building them up again and again, but exchange the sand with stone, in order to make them more resilient to the waves of change.
Avoid hasty abstractions (AHA)
Another thing to consider when trying to implement solutions is to avoid premature optimization.
"Prefer duplication over the wrong abstraction" (Sandi Metz, Source).
Hence it is very important to understand the root idea, and see the bigger picture of a feature or idea first, before diving into abstraction or system-building. In teams it also underlines the importance of communicating those things properly.
What to do?
- Find the processes and tasks that are WET ("Wastes everyone's time") and make them DRY
- Process automation with simple tools like Zapier, IFTT, Alfred, etc.
- Try to do one thing, that permanently improves your life each day (Choose a highlight for each day in order to be more productive)
- Always think about the fact that With systems and automated processes you gain compounding interest in your investment of time