The Library

Where the time goes, and what to do about it

Twenty categories of time leak and ten tools for fixing them. This is the reference behind the instruments: what each leak is, the question that surfaces it, how to size it, and which move it takes.

It is a toolkit, not another audit. Nothing here collects anything from you or scores you. Every figure you will see described as a typical range is illustrative — an order of magnitude to prime your eye, never a claim about what anyone recovered.

The frame

SAVE, and it is a cycle

Subtract

Cheapest hours, fastest credibility.

Automate

Visible, quantifiable, sticky.

Vest

Slower to return, the flagship hook.

Exit

Keep it, freeze it, or remove it.

Exit is asked twice. Once at the front, cheaply, as an opportunity-cost screen — given everything else these hours could go to, is this worth trying to salvage? That opening question only ever produces a candidate list. It never removes anything, because a service line that looks unprofitable is very often just an un-automated one, and you cannot count hours saved on something you deleted before you measured it.

Then Subtract, Automate and Vest run on whatever survived. Exit is asked again at the end, now with the measurements in hand, and this time it may rule. Two branches: exit the work — keep it running exactly as it is and stop investing improvement effort — or exit the thing, removing it entirely, maintenance included. A frozen item leaves the cycle and comes back only on a trigger, never on a schedule.

To walk one workflow through the cycle on paper, use the SAVE Worksheet.

Download blank worksheet View completed example

Printables

On paper, to fill in by hand

For the week you will not sit at a desk. US Letter PDFs; print them, carry them, write on them. Each one comes blank, and as a Completed Example: the same form filled in for one landscaping business, so you can see what a finished sheet looks like before you start yours. Free, with nothing to sign up for.

Interruption Tally
The Interruption Audit on paper. One sheet per working day for three days, one line per interruption, then a review page to combine the days and choose one fix.
- Download blank worksheet
  2 pages. A daily log to print three times, and the three-day review.
- View completed example
  Completed Example, 4 pages. Three logged days and the review, filled in for a landscaping business.
The 20 Time Leaks
A one-page field check. Walk a normal week, tick the leaks you recognise, and size three of them before you fix any.
- Download blank worksheet
  1 page. All twenty categories, the Toil Test, and space to size three leaks.
- View completed example
  Completed Example, 1 page. Three leaks picked and sized for the same landscaping business.
The SAVE Worksheet
One workflow per sheet, walked through Exit, Subtract, Automate, Vest and Exit again, with the hours sized at each step and one change to act on.
- Download blank worksheet
  2 pages. The opening screen and the three steps, then the closing decision.
- View completed example
  Completed Example, 2 pages. One purchasing workflow taken through the cycle, on the same two pages.

Filter by SAVE step

20 leaks · 10 tools

Leaks · what is wrong

The twenty categories

One to seventeen are task-level. Eighteen to twenty are the containers a task-level leak lives inside — a client, a service line, a standing commitment — and they are ruled on at the Exit gate. The numbers are stable; categories are appended, never renumbered.

All twenty on one page, to tick off against a normal week: The 20 Time Leaks. Download blank worksheet View completed example

Tools · what to do about it

Ten you can run yourself

Each one says what it is for, how you know you need it, what it takes in, what it gives back, and what to measure. None of them collects anything from you.