## Atomic Insight Edmond Lau (author of *The Effective Engineer*) argues that time-saving tools compound rather than merely accelerate: "faster tools enable new workflows, sometimes unexpected ones, that previously weren't possible." His concrete decision rule: once a manual task has been done three or more times, it's worth evaluating whether to automate it — the investment pays for itself multiple times over. He grounds this in measured examples, not just intuition: 500ms of added search latency cut search volume by 20%; cutting a compile from 20 minutes to 2 minutes changes the development workflow itself, not just its speed; Quora's 40-50 daily deploys reshaped how the team engineered, not just how fast it shipped. The underlying claim is qualitative, not quantitative: speed past a threshold unlocks workflows that didn't exist at the slower speed, the way faster travel didn't just shorten trips but restructured commerce and behavior (railroads, airlines). > *Correction (2026-07-03)*: the prior version of this note cross-linked `[[Development Philosophy]]` and `[[AI Integration Strategy]]` as related — both resolve to unrelated vault docs (a consulting-positioning doc and an archived financial strategy note) with no real thematic connection to this essay. Removed; see [[The Effective Engineer - Highlights]] for the genuinely related book source instead. --- *Source: [Edmond Lau — "Do More With Less Time"](https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01k5t1rfjfsdmk4np5h2wr217f), cross-referenced against [[The Effective Engineer - Highlights]] — 2026-07-03*