What is your best "trick" to make your efforts more efficient?
 

Something simple that makes the biggest impact on making a job easier or improves your life. Wetting the thread before putting it through the needle, sifting the bread twice to make the bread more airy, wetting the dressing prior to attempting to remove it, using a pipe on the end of your wrench for leverage, heel lift under the short leg for a limb length discrepancy, that sort of thing.

The thing that surprised me the most was closing one eye to save your night vision. For example. I went into a room to open a window, wanted to pick out what I am wearing today, need to turn on the light. Close my eye, keep it closed while the lights are on, pick out a shirt, open when lights are off. Open your eye and it is like magic, you can still see in the dark. Cover your eye for a while, half an hour, with an eye patch, and you will have night vision in that eye. Turns out, that was usually the deal with old timey sailors and the eye patch, so they could see better when they went below deck.

Arrr matey, what have you got for a neat trick?

Hmmm...kind of related to the above - which is to walk along a shoreline at night with a red-filtered flashlight. Turns out that most critters cannot see that well in red light - so the red light enables one to spy on them unawares...which is truly amazing! Oh...and don't forget that "scorpion-finder" black light flashlight while in the desert!

But what I really should admit here right off the bat...my best "trick" (at least in terms of efficiency) is that first cup of coffee!

For work related stuff? Knowing how to use a *nix command line and the various programs in the textutils, fileutils, and related packages.

I also tend to write programs - from simple aliases and scripts to full blown applications - to do what appear to be repetitive processes as soon as I realize I'll be doing the same thing more than once or twice.

15 years ago I saw three of our employees doign their every-two-years "build the catalog by cutting and pasting from this excel document to that excel document". Took 'em 3 weeks every two years to do this. First year they were moved into my department, I looked at what they were doing, sent them to go get me a cup of coffee across campus (about a 15 minute round trip) and when they returned I had a simple shell script that would do the entire job in about 10 minutes of run time, using cat, cut, sed, and grep.

I wouldn't call it a neat trick but with really big projects I break it down into smaller ones and only focus on that part. I also allow myself to finish early and take breaks as I want.

Right now I'm in the middle of repairing and repainting the outside wood work of my house. It's a big job in total but step by step it doesn't seem so bad. Also... If you need motivation try doing a job you've been putting off for a while. As part of my house painting project I spent an afternoon clearing out the gutters and making sure the drain pipes were clear. Once finished I felt really good about myself.

Plan ahead and use visualization ahead of time. Even the smallest jobs.

"Loading paint onto a paint brush" ... This is how I do it.

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Spread liquid soap all over your hands before putting them in the stream of water. That way you get all the soap and there's no little clump that rinses right off into the sink that you have to rinse out separately.

if it doesn't go, don't force it. or at least until you understand why. I have complicated more projects by "making it fit" and then having to fix additional things than slowing down and thinking it through.

Being a basically one handed DIYer hanging anything is a PITA. So I use "helpers" in the form of nailers. For example when I need to hang anything on a wall I use a 1x 2 as a "rest" to place the hangee on. Kinda sorta like using a "T" when you put up sheet rock overhead, sorta.

Also, even nailing is a problem since I can't hold the nail with my hand while I hammer it. So, I pre drill a starter hole deep enough to hold the nail for me. A PITA sure but it gets the job done.

I just don't use soap that can fall off in clumps. I actually get one hand damp, then put soap on as the water helps with the lather.

Actually reading the instructions.

For work, the thing that has made me much more efficient and stress free is to utilize all the interaction between Microsoft's Office apps. I now set up OneNote notebooks for all of my projects and anything I deem important can be copied into it with a click of a button. Client emails, delivery specs, scripts, and all the random crap that comes through Teams gets organized easily into OneNote. I'm starting to integrate To Do into my workflow, and really like it. I'll try out Planner soon to get more of my team organized on bigger projects too.

When driving in wood screws, first scrape the screw across a bar of soap to get some into the threads. This'll make the screw go in much easier. It's especially helpful with hardwoods, or when driving screws by hand.

^^^^
I use a beeswax bar on screws. They go in clean and don’t split the wood.

For stripped wood screws, instead of going oversized, drive a wood glued golf tee into the hole. Cut flush when dried, drill a new properly sized hole.

Indeed. Creating basic Excel shell scripts is my superpower as well. Also did some script automation for server builds using korn scripts in Unix.

Prior job, I automated the disaster recovery process in a programming language called REXX.

As for stuff around the house, here are some small 'life hacks' that I use:
- I use a leaf blower to 'sweep' out my garage of leaves and dirt. Much faster than the old fashioned broom technique..
- Since I am ambidextrous, when I'm painting, I can use both hands brushing on paint. Comes in really handy when up on a ladder - it extends my reach significantly.

Other stuff:
- When I travel on an airplane, anything that can leak (hair gel...etc) I put in plastic ziplock bags, just in case it leaks, it won't get all over my other toiletries.

For track stuff:
- I have separate 10 gallon crates that I use to keep stuff handy - one for tools, one for safety gear (helmet, hans, gloves...etc), and one for trailer stuff. Far easier to quickly grab what I need when I know where to look for it! IF everything has a place, then it is easy to keep track of everything!

Above all: I try to put stuff back to where I store it as soon as is feasible. At the end of the day, I clean up my tools, and put them away. That way, when I start up on something the next day, I can easily find where my stuff is. Stitch in time...
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This is my take^^^ and also I have plans "B", "C" if "A" does not work out due to time, other resource limits. If the tasks ahead are complex or involve multiple people and projects; add plans "D", "E", and "F"

The execution of a plan, I allow for potential failures, and roll over to the next best plan in order to achieve success.:)

How funny. How true....

I SLOW DOWN. I have a tendency toward anxiety, and this sometimes causes me to skip the step where I stop and think. The slower I go, the faster I accomplish things. Just another of life's counterintuitivities.

Don't stand, sit in the shower.

And brush your teeth, shave, and pee in the shower. Let's not Higgins it up though.