Efficiency Tools, 2025 Edition

In preparing for 2025, I’ve been working on “DOGE”ing my personal and professional lives.  See what I did there?  Turned “DOGE” into a verb so I can talk about efficiency tools. Except in my own life, the acronym is for “Department of Goal Efficiency.”  Or maybe “Department of Genius Efficiency” if I’m in a mood.

I’ve always been the poster child for productivity and streamlining, and I’m always looking for new ways to get everything done that I need to do, and lately, that I want to do.

To be candid, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for the last 8 months—writing multiple books for release in 2025, cleaning out my mom’s old house and renting it out, evacuating and cleaning up after multiple major hurricanes, and taking care of the world’s cutest newborn at night—and while I’m tired, I’m also super excited about what I want to accomplish in the next year.  And that means coming up with a couple of efficiency tools so I can get everything done I both need to and want to.

So to that end, I have two new game-changers I’m relying on, though the second one has a bit of shame to it.  However, I highly recommend both efficiency tools so you can keep your personal and professional lives humming along.

1. Agented AI

I’m an early adopter when it comes to most tech, but I do firmly believe This Is The Way, or will be by the end of 2025.  I’m an English major and Contracting Officer retiree, so I won’t give you a technical explanation, but it’s basically using a workflow that includes different types of AI tools (ChatGPT, WhisperAI, ProWritingAid, LeonardoAI, for example) to operate without my intervention—or with it, if I desire—to accomplish a task for me. 

Lost?

Okay, real life example I’m working on now: I have 4 very different blogs I write once a week, and I want to streamline the process. Not the writing—that’s the fun part—though I could certainly have ChatGPT write the post for me if I were not a writer by nature and didn’t prefer my oddball personality to shine through. Those four blog posts a week include this blog and how I’ll distribute it on social media.  I can dictate an article while walking my daily miles and send it to Whisper for transcription in the last 50 steps before I’m back home and, by the time I step through my front door, the draft of the post, including the image and metadata for SEO, are awaiting my approval before publishing and scheduling social media distribution. 

That’s at least 2 hours of labor saved. 

For every article I write.

And I do a lot more than just write blog posts.

I set up workflow automations in Zapier or Make, use API keys, blend other tools like Google Drive, AirTable, and WordPress.  All for one task that leaves the creativity (that only I can do) to me and the mundane to the automation.  

Sound complicated?  A little, but I can also ask ChatGPT to walk me through how to build an automation, step by step by substep. It’s tough the first time, but the payoff is in the repetition of the task.

When I’m not using workflows like this, I’m using API keys and mega-prompts in RaptorWrite to summarize chapters and articles and then suggest edits or re-ordering the content.  For pennies. Pennies!

Oh, no!  I’ve lost you already, haven’t I, because it sounds so complicated! Again, let ChatGPT walk you through the process—not like you’re 12 years old but like you’re a 70-year-old luddite with no patience. And if that’s still not enough, ask it to break down each step further.  It does work: trust me on this. Or ask a 12-year-old to help.

I wish I’d had something like this as a Government employee.  The closest I came was doing mail merges on the file documentation for 35 SBIR I’s back in 1994 when I received the proposal packages only 2 weeks before a Congressionally mandated deadline. I’m hoping Program Managers and Contracting Officers are looking into how they can use approved agented AI workflows for the mundane while they use their skills for the real magic.

2. The Efficiency Chair

I’ve always tried to do it all myself.  Sometimes I fail.  Women within 2 years of my age knew this as the “Superwoman Syndrome” because we were supposed to be able to do it all—perfect at our careers, perfect as moms, perfect at … laundry.   No room for error at anything because we could “have it all” and were supposed to epitomize that daily, usually at the sacrifice of sleep.   I’m not sure that’s changed much for my daughters’ generation, but I do know that I no longer iron for 3 hours one night a week with the baby crawling under my feet while my partner watches Thirty-Something and L.A. Law on TV.  I wasn’t using efficiency tools, but I sure was multi-tasking.

In the last two months of burning the candle at both ends, I’ve managed keep up with laundry, but just barely.  It is the quintessential never-ending task, even though I haven’t ironed in decades.  Last week, I managed to get two loads from the drier to, well, that recliner in the corner of my living room, where I’d intended to get everything folded and put away while I watched TV for a blessedly leisure hour. 

Nope.  Didn’t happen.  In fact, for the whole week,  as I rushed for a quick shower and out the door, I just grabbed something from the top of the pile.  Last night, I grabbed the last T-shirt and yoga pants and realized:

Hey, I don’t need to fold and put away anything!  Never mind guilt-tripping myself—this was really SUPER efficient!

Which leads me to reconsidering processes in urgent times:  the Efficiency Chair. 

Now, I realize you may not have an Efficiency Chair.  But I’ll bet you’ve had an Efficiency Dining Room Table.  Or an Efficiency Exercise Bike.

I’m only half-teasing about the Efficiency Chair.   The real difference in the two types of efficiency tools I describe here is that one (Agented AI) is more complicated and takes some upfront action to get the payoff later, whether that’s setting up the automated workflow or creating mega-prompts.

The other, the Efficiency [Insert least used piece of furniture here] is more about omitting part of the process to get the same or a slightly less crisp outcome.  In the case of laundry, that’s not folding/ironing/hanging/putting away clothes.  It’s not ideal, but it’ll do in a crunch.  At least for T-shirts and yoga pants, it will. For clothes that wrinkle, your real friends will understand.  Hopefully. Not all efficiencies require technology.

Efficiency tools aren’t about perfection; they’re about finding systems and solutions that work for you in the moment. Whether it’s leveraging cutting-edge AI to save hours or streamlining your processes. 

How will you make 2025 a more efficient year?