Knowing how to sequence things is powerful.

  1. Assuming you didn’t understand someone after you accuse them of spewing nonsense is much harder to recover from. If you’d checked your understanding first, you’d be in a better situation.

  2. For most people, sleeping earlier with the same number of hours leads to better sleep. So, netflix binging during the night is not the same as binging during the day. One harms more than the other.

  3. Saving early mornings for reading heavy books instead of, say, online blogs is perhaps a better use of deep work time.

  4. Working out in the afternoons might be better than doing them in the mornings when you’re fresh (and ready for creative work) or in the evenings, when you’re too tired to do them. You can sequence this better to get more out of workouts and productive hours.

  5. Building an audience before selling a product might be more effective. The right sequence opens up bigger avenues to slingshot through.

  6. Charging a trimmer in the middle of a shave is much more annoying than having it charged before hand.

  7. If you knew all the blocks beforehand in Tetris, and could sequence them however you liked, would you do better? If you have all the building blocks with you, you’d design a better spaceship than if you’re given them one by one.

    Like how initial guesses start you down a path that you might not have gone to if you had that extra information from the beginning.

  8. Reading a coursebook, before class rather than after leads to better understanding of the material.

  9. And finally, something that’s probably more intuitive: cleaning up after dinner, not before.

Next time you’re going through a sequence, ask yourself: Is that the right sequence to do things in? It’s a powerful skill to have.

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