Seven things at work that stopped taking me all afternoon

None of these need code. None of them need permission from IT. Every one of them is something you already know how to do — just slowly.

1. The weekly status reportAn hour every Friday, down to about eight minutes.
2. The forty-page document you need two things fromAsking it specific questions, and checking where each answer came from.
3. The email you rewrite six timesDeclining something. Chasing a payment. Disagreeing with someone senior.
4. The spreadsheet somebody exported badlyThis is the one that surprises people. It looks like it needs formulas.
5. Meeting notes that become actual follow-upsWritten before you've left the room, not three days later from memory.
6. The first draft of anythingNot the final version. The blank page.
7. Explaining your own work to a different audienceWhere most people end up saving the most time, and nobody thinks to try it.

The hard part was never the doing. It was knowing these were candidates in the first place, which is the part no tutorial covers because it's specific to your job and boring to film.