Efficient Work

Title: Efficient Work

Output = Unit‑time productivity × Effective work time. To achieve high output, there are two routes:

• Increase effective work time
• Boost unit‑time productivity

Increase Effective Work Time

Time is the most precious and equitable resource we all share—every day has exactly 24 hours, no more, no less. After accounting for basic living needs, we have roughly 12 hours that can be devoted to work or study. The goal is to spend as much of that time as possible on valuable activities.

The ultimate hack for using time well is the question Steve Jobs lived by: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-kBkuaOYO4. Ricardo Semler, the head of Brazil’s [Semler Group]https://book.douban.com/subject/26770268/, shared a similar practice in his TED talk How to run a company with (almost) no ruleshttps://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_company_with_almost_no_rules/transcript: On Mondays and Thursdays, I learn how to die. I call them my terminal days…

That approach is rather extreme and requires a certain set of circumstances, so it may not suit most people. In the TED video Don’t Live Each Day As If It Were Your Lasthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbG89FYKzaY, American writer Leana Dellehttp://leanadelle.com/ offers a more relatable version: If today were the first day of my life, and I have many days ahead, would I want to do what I’m about to do today? Below I share some of my own practices for “making the most of each day.”

Tip 1: Create a Distraction‑Free Work Environment

The methods described here may not fit roles that require constant interaction with people (e.g., PM, operations, HR, customer service). The principle, however, is to build a foundation that enables efficient work, and the methodology also applies to IM‑centric jobs.

We’re ordinary people living in an ecosystem where countless apps fight for our attention, making it hard to stay focused. Smartphones and instant‑messaging (IM) have turned real‑time communication into a habit. For many roles, IM is a core production tool, but for creative jobs such as engineering or design, IM becomes an efficiency killer. Red dots and message alerts fragment time, erode deep‑thinking ability, and sap concentration. To work efficiently, we first have to defeat them.

In an era where synchronous communication is the norm, deliberately building an [asynchronous communication]https://www.google.com/search?ei=C7IhXdOzN4S7tQa4iLd4&q=asynchronous+communication+in+the+workplace environment is challenging. The hardest part to tame is the IM client. Below I illustrate, using the DingTalk app we use at my company, how to turn DingTalk on macOS into an asynchronous tool. It took me roughly ¥100 and three months to fully convert it, mainly by training my brain to ignore the app.

First, look at my desktop:

(screenshot)

No red dots in sight—how did I do it? The process can be broken down into these steps:

1. Turn off DingTalk notifications in the app settings

Desktop notifications can stay on, so you still see a pop‑up when someone @‑mentions you.

2. In System Preferences → Notifications turn off all alerts and badges

What it looks like when notifications are still on:

(screenshot)

3. Tame the DingTalk icon and move it to a visual blind spot

As long as an icon is in your line of sight, you’ll keep glancing at it, hoping for new information. Removing it from view is the most effective strategy.

Step 1: Hide the DingTalk icon (and any other icons you don’t want to see) from the menu bar

The DingTalk icon in the top bar can’t be hidden via its own settings, but you can use third‑party tools:

1) Paid software [MacBartender]https://www.macbartender.com/. With Bartender you can hide any unwanted menu‑bar icons:

(screenshot of hidden icons)

You could achieve a similar effect by tweaking system files, but that’s cumbersome.

[@vagusx]https://www.yuque.com/vagusx recommends a free alternative: [Dozer]https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer. It isn’t as feature‑rich as Bartender, but it’s sufficient for hiding icons.

2) Use the built‑in macOS option: System Preferences → General → Automatically hide and show the menu bar.

Step 2: Place the Dock icon in the lower‑left “visual dead zone” — keep it there for quick access when needed. I group it with Outlook:

(screenshot)

To keep it at the bottom, I add a few more app icons for balance 😄

4. Set all group chats to “Do Not Disturb” and pin the most relevant contacts/groups to the top of the screen (usually teammates and colleagues who share your interests). This way, even if you open DingTalk occasionally, you won’t be disturbed by muted groups, and the app becomes a “check‑when‑needed” tool.

Now, when DingTalk opens, the first thing you see are the messages that truly require attention.

5. Use chat grouping, especially when you receive a lot of passive push notifications

I sort groups by relevance. Here’s my current arrangement:

• Study: Deep‑level work‑related groups and contacts
• Medicine: Traditional Chinese medicine is a personal hobby; I gather related groups here
• Yuque: User‑support messages that don’t need immediate response
• autopost: Bot‑generated notifications

After these tweaks, you regain control of your attention. The remaining challenge is training your brain not to think about DingTalk. Besides deliberate practice, you can start by not opening DingTalk on weekends, or by replacing the DingTalk window with [Yuque Desktop]https://www.yuque.com/download to capture tasks and flash ideas.

If you want to go even deeper, try the following on workdays:

• No Weibo
• No Zhihu
• No news sites
• No Douyin (TikTok)
• No internal company forum
• …

Don’t worry about being labeled “unresponsive.” Important matters will reach you via phone, DingTalk, or face‑to‑face; less‑important items can wait, and the sender may already have found a solution.

You also won’t miss any major events—if something truly matters, it will surface through the people around you.

Tip 2: Stagger Your Work Hours

Our daily tasks fall into three categories:

• Thinking: Planning, problem‑solving, code design, etc.
• Executing: Turning thoughts into deliverables
• Learning: Picking up new tech, reading, watching talks

Available time slots:

• Office hours: The biggest chunk of usable time besides sleep
• Fragmented time: Commutes, meals, before bed, after waking, etc.
• Weekends: Primarily for recovery, but still usable for learning and thinking

First level of staggering – match the right task to the right time

• Thinking: Can be done anytime, doesn’t require collaboration; use fragmented time or weekend leisure.
• Learning: Needs quiet and longer blocks; fragmented time only suffices for information intake, not deep learning. Weekends and evenings are ideal.
• Executing: Reserve office hours; during this time, any thinking or learning should be directly tied to the tasks at hand.

After this initial staggering, office time becomes execution‑focused. To stay efficient, we need a second level of staggering – make the most of office time.

For a typical developer, tasks can be grouped by required concentration:

• High concentration: Coding, design, debugging, writing articles
• Medium concentration: Testing, bug fixing, code reviews, learning new tech
• Low concentration: Email, DingTalk, quick feedback

Office environments (using a typical internet company as an example) can be roughly classified by noise level:

• Quiet: Before 11 am, 1:00‑2:30 pm, after 7:30 pm
• Moderate: 11:00‑12:30 pm, 2:30‑4:00 pm
• Busy: 4:00‑6:00 pm

To work efficiently, align tasks with these periods:

• Quiet periods → high‑concentration work
• Moderate periods → medium‑concentration work
• Busy periods → low‑concentration work

Because most people start work around 10 am, you often miss the first quiet window. Arriving earlier solves this. Staggered start – come to the office two hours before the mainstream start (by 8:30 am) – gives you an extra two hours of high‑quality work time. My colleagues [@写轮]https://www.yuque.com/kai.fangk and [@玉伯]https://www.yuque.com/yubo have adopted this; [@写轮] even wrote an article about the “2/8 Rule” for early risinghttps://www.yuque.com/kai.fangk/wave-balance/uhw4fc, summarizing the idea:

Gaining an extra two hours each morning can give you roughly 80 % of the wealth you “should” have in life; the standard 8‑hour workday accounts for only the remaining 20 %.

If you master these two staggering steps, you’ll have plenty of effective time. For an even higher level, try **advanced staggering – “peak‑shaving”**https://www.yuque.com/kai.fangk/wave-balance/drg0yb: push your best state to the limit while minimizing the impact of noisy periods. Two methods:

• Busy → Moderate: Move a discussion or design review to a quiet meeting room.
• Moderate → Quiet: Break down tasks that normally need quiet into subtasks that can be completed in a moderate‑noise setting.

Advanced staggering suits people with strong self‑control and task‑decomposition skills, but it can be cultivated through continuous workflow tuning.

On the team level, practice staggered collaboration: reserve quiet time for focused work and schedule meetings elsewhere. Suggestions:

• Hold reviews from 4‑6 pm, limiting each to one hour, and move to a quiet meeting room (preferably with windows and a pleasant environment, which fuels creativity).
• Keep meetings minimal; see Amazon’s “two‑pizza rule” and “six‑page memo” for inspirationhttps://www.ifanr.com/366790.
• Invite only essential participants; read the agenda beforehand, and skip meetings whose materials you haven’t reviewed.

You might wonder: “If everyone arrives at 8:30 am, won’t these tricks fail?”
No problem—most of the industry still starts around 10:30 am, so the advantage remains. If the norm ever shifts, you can simply move your start time to 7:30 am 😄

What if you can’t start early and must arrive around 10 am?
Stagger meals: eat lunch and dinner quickly, then use the 12:30‑3:00 pm and post‑6:30 pm windows for quiet work. You can also keep refining the “peak‑shaving” method to carve out more focused time.

Night‑owl engineers follow a different pattern: they work efficiently at night and handle medium/low‑concentration tasks during the day. This isn’t recommended for most, as our circadian rhythm is tuned to daylight.

Tip 3: Work‑Stop Backward Planning

“Backward planning of the deadline” is common and has become a de‑facto rule in many industries, but it creates invisible pressure and fuels the 996 (or even 007) culture. Instead, try backward planning of the work‑stop time. It may sound unconventional, yet it can unlock creativity and true efficiency.

Often, we end up in 996/007 because we silently assume we’ll need to work overtime, so we choose the “extend work hours” path (which feels politically correct) instead of challenging the “work efficiently” path. That expectation makes us believe there’s always more time, so we stop looking for efficiency gains. This model is unsustainable—humans have limited energy and can’t maintain such intensity forever. (There are “efficient 996” cases, but they require prior mastery of efficient work and realistic short‑term goals.)

The classic management principle [Parkinson’s Law]https://www.jianshu.com/p/a3619db83d5f states: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. In other words, tasks tend to be finished at the last possible moment.

If work always finishes at the deadline, then setting a reasonable work‑stop time automatically forces us to become more efficient. Based on this insight, here are some of my practices:

Practice 1: No work later than 11 pm on weekdays

This reinforces staggered work and leaves a little time for reading before bed. I haven’t been consistent yet—reading time is still scarce. At the start of the year I aimed to leave the office by 9:30 pm, but the hit rate was under 25 % 😓. Still, I stick to the rule: stop work before 11 pm.

Practice 2: No work on weekends

This supports * sustainable development* — we’ll be working for decades, and a balanced rhythm is essential for the long‑run marathon. I love Tsinghua’s slogan: [Work for the nation’s health for fifty years]https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%BA%E7%A5%96%E5%9B%BD%E5%81%A5%E5%BA%B7%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E4%BA%94%E5%8D%81%E5%B9%B4/12387663. I may not code for 50 years, but I hope to stay productive for 20 years or more. To embody “sustainable programming,” I reserve weekends for learning and recovery, typically doing:

• Exercise: 4‑6 hours of hiking (good for lungs and thinking; occasional companions allow discussion).
• Learning & Summarizing: Review the past week, plan the next, read papers, update my [Weekly]https://github.com/zenany/weekly.
• Free time: Family, sleep, cooking, reading, gaming, movies…

In exceptional periods when weekday efficiency isn’t enough, I may:

• Use evening learning time for work tasks
• Take one weekend day to work

But I try to keep at least one completely free day per week for rest and energy recharge—the cornerstone of sustainable work. I used to think that day was just a “reset” for the next week, but after reading [Master Yihang]https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%87%8A%E4%B8%80%E8%A1%8C/3851150’s The Miracle of Mindfulnesshttps://book.douban.com/subject/4726852/ and learning about [Mindfulness Day]https://www.luoxia.com/zhengniandeqiji/97400.htmhttps://www.luoxia.com/zhengniandeqiji/97400.htmhttps://www.luoxia.com/zhengniandeqiji/97400.htm, I realized it’s also a form of practice.

Boost Your “Combat” Ability

Making the most of work time maximizes output as long as productivity per unit time stays constant. Once you’ve fully utilized every minute, you hit a ceiling—there are only 24 hours in a day. To break through, you must increase your “combat ability,” the ultimate path to high‑efficiency work. This yields exponential gains for individuals, teams, companies, and even society. The typical way to improve is to demand efficiency from tools and division of labor. Below I share thoughts from my experience in UI development.

Tip 1: Become a Generalist

The benefits are numerous, so I won’t list them all. In the West, top‑tier engineers, designers, and product managers each master at least two disciplines. Silicon Valley’s current model is the future of China’s internet industry; we should aim to match it by acquiring multiple skills, becoming a “special‑forces” professional.

Tip 2: Optimize Your Production Tools

Build, release, and roll back are snail‑slow—the PHP + jQuery era made this feel ancient; sometimes a code change takes 10+ seconds before the page updates.

That compile time is a nightmare: you can’t use it productively, and it shatters focus into tiny fragments.

The admin backend still requires designers, PDs, and engineers to build—content products eventually need various MIS systems. MIS is mature enough that a junior or intern could handle it, but allocating senior talent is wasteful; we need better scaffolding tools.

Some UI that lacks logic still needs development, requiring designers and engineers to double‑check details. Ideally, a designer could output a ready‑to‑use JS component that only needs copy‑editing.

Data extraction still needs dedicated engineers—there should be a user‑friendly data tool where knowing Excel, SQL, and [Jupyter Notebook]https://jupyter.org/ suffices to pull and analyze the needed data.

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on 研习录 (Study Notes). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.