For hobby projects I've been pasting code into ChatGPT so that it can fulfill the role of a peer review.  It has caught many dumb mistakes that would have otherwise gone unnoticed until the debug stage.

The habit that has been most valuable to me is to document my work as I do it, rather than later.

This includes:

• Maintaining a simple project log (even in a notebook or text file).
• Recording why I made a particular design decision.
• Recording pin connections, jumper settings, and test results.
• Saving versions of schematics, code, and PCB files with descriptive names.

Why this saves time:
When I return to a project after several weeks or months, I don’t have to try to figure out what I did. I can simply pick up where I left off.

The most time saving thing ever done in my life was organising all stuffs cuz as a tech guy there is a mess really on cupboard and table,which makes it harder to find things, like if I say you to find a male to male jumper wire then you won't be able to without a deep adventure in the abyss

Simulate critical parts of the design. If the simulation works, chances are that you saved one iteration of design and the likelihood of the 1st prototype working increased by a lot. If the simulation fails, the hardware will fail for sure. 

That's too relatable, I think almost everyone here does this

I am sure it's AI generated

Woh, that's what I need to, what's the simulation software is called,I used tinkercad but that for limited

The most time-saving habit I've picked up is to add the date/revision to a filename when I save it.  ...and remembering to put the connector shell on the cable before soldering it.....

My biggest time-saving habit is organizing projects better; breaking them into smaller steps on a board; separated by "pending", "in progress" and "completed".

Now, maybe this is different for other people, but this saves me a lot of time because normally trying to "reconnect" and resume a project is a very slow process for me (reviewing where I was with the schematic, or the code, or the prototyping, etc). This is specially true when I'm working on more than one project at a time (which is sometimes unavoidable) or when I can't work on a project for an entire week. Having a quick, immediate way of knowing where I was and what comes next helps me resume my work almost immediately.

This also helps me figure out ahead of time what things can be done immediately, and what steps can't be tackled right now or have requirements that need to be met first (like ordering parts), further assisting me in making better use of my time.

Generally speaking, planning and "thinking ahead"; writing down lists of steps, decisions, requirements, etc (and crossing off those that are completed, done, etc) has become an invaluable habit in working efficiently, both at home as well as at work.

If its not the connector shell it's the heatshrink, isn't i? At this point I should put that on a sticker and place it right in front of me on my bench.