Small but effective

< I was reading something the other day which reminded me of the number of keyboard shortcuts available within some software packages.  If you take the time to learn these, they can shave seconds off simple tasks - improving your performance and productivity.  Yet each individual time you use one, the benefit is tiny.

Performance improvements in any process are like this.  Each one may be very small ... but a number of small improvements can make a substantial gain overall.

So always look for the simple, small gains ... but look hard and look often. They may offer you a massive gain over the next year.