• Focus on high-leverage activities.
    • Leverage: impact produced / time invested.
    • 80/20 rule: 80% impact comes from 20% work.
    • Focus on not more hours but more value per limited time on the task.
    • Increase leverage by:
      • Reduce the time it takes to complete the activity (default to half-hour meeting instead of one-hour one, automate manual dev process).
      • Increase the value produced (have a clear agenda beforehand, prioritize tasks based on launch date).
      • Shift to higher-leverage activities (use email instead of in-person discussion, talk to customer).
    • Output can be measured by:
      • Number of projects launched
      • Bug fixes
      • Users acquired
      • Engineers hired
      • Quality
      • Revenue generated
  • Understand the power of compound interest.
    • Compounding leads to an exponential growth curve.
    • The earlier compounding starts, the sooner it hits the exponential growth, the faster you can reap its benefits.
    • Small deltas in the interest rate can make massive differences in the long run:
      • Improving by 1% per day makes us 37x better at the end of year.
      • Google idea of 20% where engineers spend about 1 day a week on a side project to make the company better results in successful products such as Gmail , Google News, Adsense,…
  • Optimize for learning because learning compounds.
    • Find fast growing work environment.
    • Take advantage of the resources at your work.
      • Study code from best engineers.
      • Write more code.
      • Go through technical, educational material.
      • Send code views to the harshest critics.
      • Participate in design discussions - don’t wait for invitation.
      • Team with senior engineers.
    • Invest in other skills too.
      • Invest in skills that are in high demand.
      • Build strong relationships.
      • Read books.
      • Write to teach.
      • Pursue side projects.
  • Prioritize regularly.
    • Track TODO list in a single list.
    • Sort the list frequently by asking yourself on a recurring basis:
      • Is there anything else I could be doing that’s higher-leverage?
        • Focus on what directly produce value (products shipped, user acquired, business metrics moved, sales made).
        • Focus on the important and non-urgent (planning career goals, building relationships, personal development, improving workflow).
    • Preserve larger blocks of focused time + learn to say no to unimportant activities.
    • Limit the amount of work in progress + resist the urge to work on too many projects at once.
    • Make it a habit.
  • Iterate quickly to build more and learn faster.
    • Invest in time-saving tools.
      • Bringing the release time down to several minutes helps the team deploy more frequently, 40-50 times a day - skyrockets growth.
      • If it saves you 1 hour a day, it saves 10 people 10 times as much.
    • Measure the progress frequently.
  • Validate early and often.
    • A well tested, clean design, scalable product doesn’t deliver much value if users don’t engage or customers don’t buy it.
    • Bounce ideas off teammates.
  • Define measurable milestones.

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