I begin every task by thinking of better ways to accomplish it.

Someone in every kitchen eventually moves the coffee filters onto the shelf beside the machine. Nobody thanks them. Everybody's morning gets four seconds shorter, permanently.

Starting with is there a better way costs a minute and occasionally saves an hour. The trap is spending the hour hunting for the minute.

The tasks worth redesigning are the repeating ones. Anything you'll do twice a week for a year has earned the pause. The one-off has only earned doing.

Better usually means fewer steps rather than cleverer ones. Most improvements are subtractions somebody finally noticed.