Top 13 'Leverage-Creating' Productivity Shifts to pursue for Scaling Your Impact, Not Your Hours - Goh Ling Yong
We’ve all been there. You're putting in the hours—early mornings, late nights, skipped lunches. Your to-do list is a mile long, and while you’re certainly busy, you have a nagging feeling that your impact isn't growing at the same rate as your effort. You've hit the productivity ceiling, the point where working harder simply doesn't yield better results. It just leads to burnout.
The traditional approach to productivity is broken. It’s obsessed with cramming more tasks into less time, optimizing every second. But what if the goal wasn’t to do more, but to achieve more with the same (or even less) effort? The secret isn’t working harder; it's creating leverage. In physics, a lever allows you to multiply your force to move a heavy object. In your career, leverage is what allows you to multiply your impact without multiplying your hours.
This isn’t about a magical shortcut or a single "life hack." It's about making fundamental shifts in how you think, operate, and invest your time. These are the changes that transform your work from a linear equation (1 hour in = 1 unit of output) to an exponential one. Here are 13 of the most powerful, leverage-creating productivity shifts you can pursue to scale your impact, not your calendar.
1. From 'Doing the Work' to 'Designing the System'
The most significant leap in personal productivity comes when you stop seeing yourself as just a "doer" and start acting like a "designer." A doer completes a task. A designer builds a system or a process that completes the task repeatedly, reliably, and often, without their direct involvement.
Every time you face a recurring task, the doer in you just wants to get it done. The designer, however, asks, "How can I ensure this task happens perfectly next time with minimal effort?" This shift means you spend a little more time upfront to save a massive amount of time in the long run. It's the difference between manually creating a report every week and building a dashboard that updates automatically.
Actionable Tip: Pick one repetitive task you do every week. Instead of just doing it, block out an extra hour to document the process, create a checklist, or build a simple template for it. This is your first step toward becoming a systems-thinker.
2. From 'Being Busy' to 'Being Effective' (The 80/20 Rule)
Busyness is not a badge of honor; it's often a sign of misplaced priorities. The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, states that roughly 80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts. The leverage-minded professional is obsessed with identifying and protecting that critical 20%.
This requires a ruthless and honest audit of your work. What activities truly move the needle on your goals? Which tasks are "vanity work"—things that make you feel productive but don't generate real value? Scaling your impact means having the courage to say "no" to the trivial 80% so you can pour your energy into the vital 20%.
Actionable Tip: At the end of your day, review your completed tasks. For each one, ask: "If this was the only thing I did today, would it have been a successful day?" This helps you calibrate your sense of what's truly impactful versus what's just busywork.
3. From 'Lone Wolf' to 'Force Multiplier'
There's a hard limit to what you can accomplish alone. True leverage comes from collaboration and empowering others. A "lone wolf" mentality might make you the hero of a single project, but a "force multiplier" elevates the entire team, creating an impact far greater than their own individual contributions.
This means shifting your mindset from "How can I solve this?" to "Who is the best person to solve this?" or "How can I enable my team to solve this?" It involves mentoring, sharing knowledge freely, creating clear documentation so others can act independently, and celebrating team wins over individual heroics. When you make others better, your own value multiplies exponentially.
Actionable Tip: The next time someone asks you a question, resist giving the answer directly. Instead, point them to the resource where they can find it or walk them through the process of discovering it themselves. You're not just solving one problem; you're teaching them how to solve a whole class of future problems.
4. From 'Manual Repetition' to 'Intelligent Automation'
In today's world, if a task is repetitive, predictable, and digital, it can likely be automated. Spending hours copying data between spreadsheets, sending reminder emails, or generating standard reports is a colossal waste of your unique human creativity and problem-solving skills.
Leverage here means becoming a master of your tools. Learn about email filters and templates, text expanders (like aText or TextExpander), and no-code automation platforms like Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat). These tools can act as your personal digital assistant, handling the robotic work so you can focus on the strategic work that only you can do.
Actionable Tip: Identify one digital chore you do at least three times a week. Search online for "[Software you use] + automate + [task you do]." You'll be amazed at the solutions that exist to take that work off your plate forever.
5. From 'Reinventing the Wheel' to 'Building Playbooks'
How many times have you started a new project and had to figure out the steps from scratch? Or onboarded a new team member and spent days explaining the same processes? This is "reinventing the wheel," and it's a massive leverage-killer. The alternative is to create playbooks, templates, and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
A playbook isn't a rigid set of rules; it's a living document that captures the best practices, checklists, and key learnings for a recurring process. It's the "how-to" guide for success. Creating these assets takes time upfront but pays massive dividends by ensuring quality, consistency, and speed, whether the task is performed by you or someone else. As we often discuss on the Goh Ling Yong blog, documenting your process is the first step to scaling it.
Actionable Tip: Think of a project you've completed successfully. Spend 30 minutes writing down the key phases, the "gotchas" to avoid, and the critical steps you took. Save it as a "Project Kickstart Template." The next time a similar project comes up, you'll start from a position of strength and clarity.
6. From 'Answering Questions' to 'Creating Assets'
If you're an expert in your field, you likely spend a lot of time answering the same questions over and over. Each time you answer one in a private chat or email, the value of that answer is temporary and limited to one person. The leverage shift is to turn those answers into durable, public assets.
This means instead of just replying, you write a concise FAQ document, record a short tutorial video, or draft a detailed "how-to" guide. You are creating a resource that can answer that question for hundreds or thousands of people, 24/7, without any further effort from you. Each asset you create is a tiny engine of leverage working on your behalf.
Actionable Tip: For the next week, keep a note of every question you get asked more than once. At the end of the week, choose the most common one and create a reusable asset to answer it. Share it widely the next time it comes up.
7. From 'Working In the Business' to 'Working On the Business'
This concept, made famous by Michael Gerber's "The E-Myth," is crucial for anyone, not just entrepreneurs. "Working in the business" is doing the day-to-day tasks. "Working on the business" is stepping back to improve the systems, strategies, and processes that drive the work.
It's easy to get so caught up in the "doing" that you never make time for improving. But your biggest leverage comes from the time you spend sharpening your axe, not just swinging it. This means regularly blocking out time to reflect on your workflows, learn a new skill, plan for the long term, or streamline a clunky process.
Actionable Tip: Schedule a recurring 90-minute meeting with yourself every Friday afternoon called "Systems Improvement." Use this time to review your week, identify bottlenecks, and brainstorm one small improvement you can implement next week. Protect this time fiercely.
8. From 'Delegating Tasks' to 'Delegating Outcomes'
Many people struggle with delegation because they do it wrong. They delegate a list of tasks and then micromanage the process, which creates more work for them, not less. True leverage comes from delegating outcomes.
Delegating a task sounds like: "Please email these three clients and follow up on Tuesday." Delegating an outcome sounds like: "Our goal is to get a response from these three clients by the end of the week. You have full ownership of the process. Let me know what you need from me to make that happen." The latter approach transfers ownership, fosters creativity, and frees up your mental energy completely.
Actionable Tip: Identify one area of your responsibility you can delegate. Define the desired outcome or "Definition of Done" clearly in writing. Then, hand it over to a team member and give them the autonomy to achieve it, making yourself available for support, not for micromanagement.
9. From 'Perfect First Drafts' to 'Rapid Iteration'
Perfectionism is the enemy of leverage. It causes you to spend 80% of your time on the final 20% of a task, where the returns are diminishingly small. The leverage-based approach is to embrace rapid iteration: get a "good enough" version 1.0 out the door, gather feedback, and then improve it.
This applies to everything from writing a report to launching a new feature. By getting something into the real world faster, you learn faster. The feedback you receive is infinitely more valuable than the extra hours you would have spent polishing in isolation. This creates a virtuous cycle of learning and improvement that scales your results much faster than a slow, perfectionistic process.
Actionable Tip: On your next project, give yourself a tight, almost uncomfortable deadline to create a "minimum viable" version. Share it with a trusted colleague for feedback. The goal is not to present a perfect product, but to start a productive conversation.
10. From 'Reactive Communication' to 'Asynchronous by Default'
Constant interruptions from emails, chats, and meetings are leverage killers. They fragment your attention and prevent you from entering the state of "deep work" required for high-impact tasks. Reactive communication puts everyone else's agenda ahead of your own.
The shift is to move towards an "asynchronous-by-default" mindset. This means you assume communication doesn't require an immediate response. You use tools like shared documents (Google Docs, Notion) for collaboration instead of back-and-forth emails. You batch your email checking to two or three specific times a day and turn off notifications. This reclaims your focus, which is your most valuable resource.
Actionable Tip: Remove email and chat apps from your phone's home screen and turn off all non-essential notifications on your computer. Try committing to checking email only at 11 AM and 4 PM for one day and see how much more focused you are.
11. From 'Consuming Information' to 'Applying Knowledge'
In an age of information overload, it's easy to fall into the trap of passive consumption—endlessly reading articles, watching videos, and listening to podcasts without ever putting the knowledge into practice. Information is potential leverage; applied knowledge is actual leverage.
The shift is to move from a "just-in-case" learning model (hoarding information you might need one day) to a "just-in-time" learning model (learning what you need to solve an immediate problem or complete a specific project). This ensures you retain the information better because you are using it immediately.
Actionable Tip: The next time you learn a new concept from a book or article, don't just highlight it. Open a blank document and write down three specific ways you can apply that concept to your work or life this week. Then, schedule time to actually do it.
12. From 'Adding Commitments' to 'Pruning Commitments'
Productivity isn't just about what you add; it's about what you subtract. Over time, our professional lives accumulate "cruft"—old projects, recurring meetings that have lost their purpose, and subscriptions that are no longer useful. These commitments drain your time and energy with little return.
Creating leverage requires you to become a ruthless editor of your own life. You need to periodically review your commitments and ask, "If I weren't already doing this, would I start doing it today?" If the answer is no, it's time to prune. Saying "no" is one of the highest-leverage skills you can develop. It protects your time and focus for the things that truly matter. I've found this mindset, often championed by leaders like Goh Ling Yong, to be critical for sustainable career growth.
Actionable Tip: Look at your calendar for the past month. Identify one recurring meeting or commitment that provides you with the least value. Politely decline the next invitation or find a way to contribute asynchronously (e.g., by reading the minutes later).
13. From 'Time Management' to 'Energy Management'
The final, and perhaps most important, shift is to recognize that time is finite, but energy is renewable and can be managed. A highly productive hour when you are focused, energized, and creative is worth five hours of sluggish, distracted work late at night.
This means aligning your most important tasks with your peak energy levels (e.g., doing deep, creative work in the morning if you're a "morning person"). It also means proactively managing your energy through proper sleep, nutrition, exercise, and strategic breaks. You can't create leverage if you're running on empty. Your physical and mental well-being is the ultimate foundation for all other productivity.
Actionable Tip: For one week, track your energy levels on a scale of 1-10 at different points in the day. Identify your personal "prime time." Reschedule your work week to protect this time for your most important, high-cognition tasks, and leave low-energy periods for administrative work.
Your Impact Is a Choice, Not a Clock
Scaling your impact isn't about finding a magic app or working 80-hour weeks. It's about a series of deliberate, intelligent shifts in your approach to work. It’s about choosing leverage over labor, effectiveness over busyness, and systems over sweat.
Don't feel overwhelmed by this list. You don't need to master all 13 shifts overnight. The goal is progress, not perfection. Pick just one that resonates with you the most and commit to practicing it for the next 30 days. The results might just astound you.
What's the one leverage-creating shift you're going to focus on first? Share your choice in the comments below—I'd love to hear what you're working on
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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