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What’s the most time-saving habit you’ve picked up? We are asking e14 in our Join, Share & Win Competition

A new month means a new AskE14!

Engineers, makers, and problem‑solvers are always finding smarter ways to work. From optimising workflows to automating repetitive tasks, small habits can add up to serious time savings.

This month, AskE14 is all about sharing the habits that help you work more efficiently, whether you’re designing, prototyping, debugging, documenting, or managing projects.

Time for the question:

What’s the most time-saving habit you’ve picked up?

Time is a valuable resource in engineering. A simple habit — like better version control, smarter test setups, or clearer documentation. This can save hours down the line.

Competition Details

You'll have to be a member of the element14 Community to join in and take part in this “Join, Share & Win” challenge. It's simple, all you have to do is:

1. You need to make sure you are Register or Login
2. Then answer the following question by adding a reply or commenting!

What’s the most time-saving habit you’ve picked up?

This month, we are giving away:

The Community team will then select the best 3 answers to win the UNO R4 Minima!

Closing date: 1st March

Winners announced: 10th March

UNO R4 Minima

Terms and Conditions

PDF

The winners!

dang74

wolfgangfriedrich

skruglewicz

E14Alice will be reaching out to you soon to confirm contact details

kmikemoo 7 months ago in reply to cstanton

cstanton Alas... many of mine become "not intuitive" after I've moved onto another project. I have learned to greatly appreciate even the little amount of documentation that I remember to do.
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cstanton 7 months ago in reply to Aniket_kumar_raj

Aniket_kumar_raj said:
Doing documentation is the most nerdy thing

Good documentation is very under-appreciated when the project/product/item is not intuitive, that's for certain.
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Aniket_kumar_raj 7 months ago in reply to hfwt31

Doing documentation is the most nerdy thing , but is a nice flex to non techy friends
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gordonmx 7 months ago

I’ll stick by my original post for my most valuable habits (See my Feb 2, 11:36am post), but will add a couple more. When asked to work on a project, I always document the project functional requirements, estimated costs and schedule before any coding is started. This includes my boss (and his boss) signing off on the document. When they show up 3 months later with additional features or “feature creep” I show them what they had original agreed too. I outline and document the “cost” in dollars and schedule. Feature creep is the number one cause for project schedule slips and cost overruns. I may take a little extra effort, but this habit has saved my bacon in performance reviews many times.
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bradfordmiller 7 months ago in reply to gordonmx

It is important to distinguish between hell-thy (like tofu) and heaven-thy (like chocolate).
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battlecoder 7 months ago in reply to bradfordmiller

At one point I started being very vocal at work about this, requesting to only be invited to meetings where I was absolutely needed, and that has been a great time efficiency gain. There's seldom been a week that I've not managed to save time by asking "Am I really needed for this?"
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bradfordmiller 7 months ago in reply to DAB

Since we're addressing time-saving, I have to agree that's a great strategy. I used to just hide out in one of the labs or the library and claim I forgot if challenged (for the large group meetings that invariably went on for two hours). I also used the excuse of working on a proposal, since bringing in business always trumped everything.
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Aniket_kumar_raj 7 months ago in reply to DAB

Aura farming in last sentence
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Aniket_kumar_raj 7 months ago in reply to battlecoder

battle writer
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battlecoder 7 months ago in reply to Arnovsharma

I would love to say that this doesn't happen to me, but I just spent like 20 minutes looking for a transistor tester that I normally keep on my bench, that apparently decided to relocate itself while I was away.
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