What if you had to redo this task in six months?
You've learned how to prioritize, avoid procrastination, and even take one minute to think before acting.
With all that, you're probably moving efficiently.
But ask yourself a simple question:
what if you had to do the exact same task in six months... or in two years?
This is where a lot of time gets wasted.
The problem with tasks you repeat
We all have tasks we redo regularly:
- start a hiring process
- submit expense reports
- issue an invoice
- place a vendor order
- file taxes
The issue is that when a few weeks pass between two occurrences, you forget:
- where the right file is
- who to email
- what order to do things in
- what traps to avoid
As a result, you rack your brain again, ask for help again, sometimes make mistakes.
You waste time, and you waste other people's time too.
The solution: your playbook
To avoid that, there is a very simple and very old method: a playbook (a vademecum).
No, not toothpaste.
A vademecum is a cheat sheet, a document that describes, step by step, how to complete a repetitive process.
Documents like this have existed for centuries:
- in medicine
- in engineering
- in forestry
- in film production
- in event planning
And yet we almost never create them for our own work.
What does a good playbook look like?
A playbook is simply a list of clear instructions, step by step.
Example: onboarding a new person on your team.
Your playbook could include:
- send a welcome email with practical info
- order the computer
- create the email address
- grant access to internal tools
- organize a welcome drink
- handle required declarations
- plan intros with teams
- offer the book The 25th Hour (highly recommended option)
The idea is simple: if it's not written, you'll forget something.
And one important detail: make it pleasant to read.
The clearer and better presented it is, the more you'll want to use it.
Not just for work
Playbooks are also very useful in personal life.
A few examples:
- filing taxes
- packing your bag
- organizing a move
- preparing a long trip
For packing, for example, you can even have multiple versions:
- a "winter" playbook
- a "summer" playbook
Same kind of trip, same needs, same mistakes avoided.
The real bonus: continuous improvement
The first advantage of a playbook is obvious: you save time.
But the second is even more interesting:
you enter a logic of incremental improvement.
Every time you redo a task, you can:
- improve a sentence
- add a document
- remove a useless step
- optimize the order of actions
That's why many professional playbooks are on their 15th or 20th edition.
Collaborative playbooks
If some processes involve several people, you can go further.
Make your playbooks collaborative, wiki-style:
- anyone can propose improvements
- good ideas spread
- everyone becomes more effective
That's exactly what many companies do with internal wikis.
And in a way, you could say that The 25th Hour itself is a kind of productivity playbook: a document enriched by hundreds of iterations, experiences, and feedback.
Write now to save time later
Creating a playbook takes a bit of effort at first.
But like timeboxing or wait a minute, it's an investment.
Effort today.
Hours saved tomorrow.
One email a day.
Just enough to work better.