Efficient Work Practices
July 2026 1 min read
There's no point in work being stressful, unpleasant, or emotional. If it is, it needs a fix. The goal of work is to flow seamlessly. You understand precisely what to do. Tasks are written for yourself with as much clarity and usefulness as possible at the moment of writing.
Then it's about routine prioritization, feeling the cycle, and delivering.
It's a good habit to write to-dos explicitly, as Josh Allen advises in Getting Things Done. This way, right from the name of the to-do, you know what's needed:
❌ Research and objective
💚 Do foundational research to write the baseline for the objective in Linear
Then form a cycle in Linear or a sprint in Jira, picking only the top-priority items. Keep cycles short. Prioritize often. Add information as it's revealed or as insights are discovered.
That's it. Work shouldn't be crazy.
It gets harder when the problem is outside your scope of control, though it's still possible to groom it in if you wish. I've never had a situation where I hated something at the job — where it was completely off, harming my focus, my output, and collaboration — and it wasn't fixed.
The fix can come as a surprise, and we don't know what opportunities the future holds.
But if you have a vision of what your work process should look like, then, surprisingly, you're in charge of your future even if it depends on others.
The core idea is that there's no bonus in being part of a dysfunctional system. Dysfunctional systems are prevalent. You may not be able to change the entire system, but your part of it should be comfortable and productive rather than chaotic and dysfunctional.