Four months ago, I took over laundry duty at home.
(Yes, this connects to software, I promise)
My wife had a simple system: one big basket for everything. When it’s full, you dump it out, sort by type (whites, colors, sports), and put in the machine the biggest pile. The rest go back into the basket.
I’m a very efficient person. I hate wasting time, even minutes of it. So the first thing I did was get this 3-part laundry basket from Amazon:
I’m super proud of that purchase - saves me a full minute every day! :)
I know it sounds very minor. But it’s not just the time, it’s the energy - those small annoying things pile up and slowly drain you.
Work is full of those, too.
The settings you never fixed, the alerts you keep ignoring, the commands you keep manually typing every day. Tiny things that quietly wear you down.
And the crazy thing is, it’s so simple to fix most of them!
Here are 7 opportunities to get rid of them (with a practical example in each):
Wrong defaults
Your work station
Distracting Slack messages
Chaotic Email
Constantly-moving meetings
Shitty templates
Annoying alerts
1. Wrong default
This one is super common: when you start to type your destination in the Chrome search bar, but the first result goes to the wrong page. And as we are lazy, we click enter and then need 2-3 extra clicks to navigate to where we actually needed.
For example, I’m using Supabase, and for a few days, the first result brought me to a project I already deleted:
Until I just removed it (you have a small X on the right), and now I go straight to the dashboard:
Or in a similar situation, you bookmarked the wrong page on a website, so every time you enter the site, you need to go through an additional click. Just re-bookmark!
2. Your workstation
If you don’t have a docking station at home, you should definitely consider it! Instead of reconnecting the screen(s), the charger, and so on, just connect a single cable (I bought one right when COVID started).
Another common one is forgetting the power cable.
So instead of always trying to remember to put my laptop’s power cable in the bag when I travel, I just bought a second cable that stays in my travel bag.
Same with cellphone chargers (bought one for every place I spend some time at - work, my parents, parents-in-law’s place).
3. Distracting Slack messages
If you use Teams, I’m sure similar things exist there (and I symphatize with you).
Most of us spend at least 1-2 hours every day on Slack. Optimizing it helped me a lot to reduce stress and get some time back.
Here are my 4 best tips:
1. Organize your DMs and channels by categories. This saves you searching time, and removes clutter from the screen.
2. Show only channels with unread messages. No more scrolling 100+ channels:
3. Use reminders. When I read a message I can’t answer now, instead of keeping it unread, I set a reminder for when it’ll be relevant for me to do something about it. Often I’ll choose a specific slot at the end of each day, when I ‘clean up’ everything.
4. Quit non-relevant threads (and public channels!). Know the feeling when you are tagged in a message, and then people keep sending replies in a thread, but it’s not relevant to you? Instead of being distracted, stop the notifications for that thread.
4. Shitty templates
Old templates slow people down.
That retro doc with five questions no one reads? The onboarding checklist with missing links and outdated tools?
Instead of helping, they add noise. People skip them, or worse - follow them and get the wrong info.
Fixing them takes just 5 minutes.
5. Annoying alerts
We will have those annoying false alarms. The CI alert that everyone ignores but still pings you, or that infra alert you know you shouldt turn off.
In the moment, it’s always faster to just ignore it, than spending 15 minutes fixing it. But the sooner you take care of it - the more time you’ll save in the long run.
Just fix that damn thing.
6. Chaotic email
After Slack, email is the biggest time-waster. Everyone has their own system, in this article I shared mine - how to get to zero inbox in 10 minutes.
7. Constantly-moving meetings
That recurring 1:1s that always need to be rescheduled?
If something always pops up on that day/time every week - it means it’s a bad time. Just move it once and for all.
