A decent hack for your life: Design workflows for repetitive tasks.

I used to get annoyed every time I had to get a new photo for the visa process. Most countries have different requirements for the photo background: how much of your torso should be visible, and so on. Then I realised that you could literally take any old photo, crop out the face/upper body based on the requirements, use remove dot bg to get a transparent background and then use figma to edit based on the requirements. It might seem obvious to a designer. But it took me a while to figure it out.

I have a checklist that allows me to pack in less than half an hour when I travel to Jakarta every two months. Out-of-town trips are as easy as a visit to a friend’s house.

I have a house hunting checklist. In my early years, I had to change houses quite often. Having a checklist has helped me to avoid a lot of the mistakes that people make when they look for a house.

The same goes for work. There are a lot of standardised playbooks that help me figure out how to get progress updates, how to deal with stakeholders and also how to mentor people.

I suggest you to do the same.