The Library
Where the time goes, and what to do about it
Twenty categories of time leak and ten tools for fixing them. This is the reference behind the instruments: what each leak is, the question that surfaces it, how to size it, and which move it takes.
It is a toolkit, not another audit. Nothing here collects anything from you or scores you. Every figure you will see described as a typical range is illustrative — an order of magnitude to prime your eye, never a claim about what anyone recovered.
The frame
SAVE, and it is a cycle
Subtract
Cheapest hours, fastest credibility.
Automate
Visible, quantifiable, sticky.
Vest
Slower to return, the flagship hook.
Exit
Keep it, freeze it, or remove it.
Exit is asked twice. Once at the front, cheaply, as an opportunity-cost screen — given everything else these hours could go to, is this worth trying to salvage? That opening question only ever produces a candidate list. It never removes anything, because a service line that looks unprofitable is very often just an un-automated one, and you cannot count hours saved on something you deleted before you measured it.
Then Subtract, Automate and Vest run on whatever survived. Exit is asked again at the end, now with the measurements in hand, and this time it may rule. Two branches: exit the work — keep it running exactly as it is and stop investing improvement effort — or exit the thing, removing it entirely, maintenance included. A frozen item leaves the cycle and comes back only on a trigger, never on a schedule.
Filter by SAVE step
20 leaks · 10 tools
Leaks · what is wrong
The twenty categories
One to seventeen are task-level. Eighteen to twenty are the containers a task-level leak lives inside — a client, a service line, a standing commitment — and they are ruled on at the Exit gate. The numbers are stable; categories are appended, never renumbered.
- 01Recurring reports nobody acts on
A report generated on a schedule that no decision has depended on recently.
SubtractEliminate - 02Agenda-less recurring meetings the owner attends
A standing meeting with no agenda, where the owner's attendance is assumed rather than justified.
SubtractEliminate - 03Tool sprawl and shelfware
Paid software nobody actually uses, or overlapping tools doing the same job.
SubtractEliminate - 04Owner's inbox and message triage
The owner personally reads, sorts, and responds to messages that follow repeatable patterns.
AutomateAutomate - 05Quoting, proposals, and estimates
A manually assembled quote or proposal for every prospect, rebuilt from scratch or near-scratch each time.
AutomateSimplify - 06Scheduling back-and-forth
Multiple email or text round-trips to land on a meeting time.
AutomateAutomate - 07Invoicing, receivables, and payment chasing
Manual invoice generation and manual follow-up on late payers.
AutomateAutomate - 08Re-keying data between systems
The same information typed into two or more systems because they don't talk to each other.
AutomateAutomate - 09Onboarding done from memory
Onboarding a new client or hire happens ad hoc, from the owner's memory, undocumented.
VestStandardize - 10Repeated questions and tribal knowledge
People interrupt the owner repeatedly for answers that don't change.
VestStandardize - 11Approvals bottlenecked on the owner
Work stops until the owner personally signs off, regardless of stakes.
VestDelegate - 12The "only I can do this" tasks
A task the owner believes only they can do, often untested.
VestDelegate - 13Rework
Work redone because of an error, unclear requirements, or a miscommunication the first time through.
VestStandardize - 14Waiting on external dependencies
Work paused waiting on something outside the business's own control: a client's response, a vendor's delivery, a third-party approval.
VestSimplify - 15Context switching and fragmented attention
Attention fragmented by interruptions, notifications, or a schedule with no protected blocks. The cost is not the interruption's length but the roughly 23 minutes of refocus it costs afterwards.
SubtractEliminate - 16Non-utilized talent
A high-value person spending disproportionate time on low-value-per-hour work they could hand off but haven't. Distinct from "only I can do this": here someone else could, it just hasn't been handed off.
VestDelegate - 17Location- or device-locked work
Work that can only be done at one specific computer or location, so windows where you could otherwise work (commuting, travelling, between meetings) go unused.
AutomateSimplify - 18The disproportionate client or account
A client whose share of your personal hours far exceeds its share of revenue or strategic value. Usually tolerated for historical reasons: they were the first big customer, they are a friend, they were loyal during a hard year.
ExitEliminateContainer - 19The service line that no longer earns its place
An offering kept because it once made sense: a legacy product, a seasonal service, a favour that became a line item. It consumes operational attention out of proportion to its margin, and it is frequently the reason several task-level leaks exist at all.
ExitEliminateContainer - 20Commitments that outlived their reason
Standing obligations outside the core work: recurring vendor calls, networking groups, association roles, advisory seats, a partnership that no longer produces anything. Each was justified once. None is reviewed.
ExitEliminateContainer
Tools · what to do about it
Ten you can run yourself
Each one says what it is for, how you know you need it, what it takes in, what it gives back, and what to measure. None of them collects anything from you.
- T-01Why Me?
For everything that reaches the owner, ask why it had to be that person.
Vest · Exit (open) - T-02Decision Rights Map
Write down who decides what, so decisions stop defaulting upward.
Vest - T-03Approval Thresholds
Set the line below which nobody needs to ask.
Vest - T-04Responsibility Map (RACI)
For each step of a workflow, name who does it, who owns the result, who is consulted and who is told.
Subtract · Vest - T-05Meeting Keep, Kill or Redesign
Put every recurring meeting through one of three verdicts.
Subtract · Exit (close) - T-06Information Flow Map
Trace where a piece of information is entered, copied, asked for and stored.
Subtract · Automate - T-07Single Source of Truth
Decide the one place each kind of information lives, and make every other copy read from it.
Subtract · Automate - T-08The Toil Test and the Rule of Three
Decide whether a recurring task should be automated, delegated or left alone.
Automate · Vest - T-09Leverage Prioritization Matrix
Put every finding in order: what to do now, next, later, or deliberately leave alone.
Subtract · Automate · Vest · Exit (close) - T-10Time P&L
Account for time the way a P&L accounts for money: what it costs, where it goes, what came back.
The whole cycle