Chapter 1 — Leverage

Leverage = impact produced ÷ time invested. It’s the ROI of effort, and the book’s core yardstick: effective engineers aren’t the ones working the most hours, they’re the ones spending limited time on the highest-return work.

Three ways to increase leverage (Grove, High Output Management)

1. Reduce the time an activity takes.
2. Increase the value the activity produces.
3. Shift to a higher-leverage activity entirely.

Turned into questions to ask of anything on your plate:

• Can I do this faster?
• Can I make it produce more value?
• Is there something else worth more of my time right now?

Watch-outs

• High-leverage ≠ easy win. Like a physical lever, the big payoffs often need consistent effort sustained over a long period, not a quick hit.
• 80/20: most impact comes from a small slice of the work — that slice is the set of high-leverage activities.

My take

The three “ways” map onto a concrete example: automating dev/test (faster), prioritising for launch (more value), talking to support to find a better feature (shift). Same lens, different rung.

Source

Edmond Lau, The Effective Engineer, Ch. 1.