Or, as I recently thought about it, learning how to do the smallest amount of effort for the highest outcome possible. This usually involves knowing how to do what you want to do, but finding better, faster, easier ways of doing it so that you can spend less time and energy on a given task.
Let me give you a few examples of what I do, or what I should do, regarding certain things in my life, that help / should help me do more, while putting in less effort.
Let's start with this little challenge of mine, of writing daily. This activity takes time, requires effort, and no matter how much I try to work in advance, those two things don't change. If I want to do things right I have to think of ideas, something to write about, then to spend time writing articles, then edit them all and then post them.
What could I do to reduce the amount of time I spend on this task?
Well, first and foremost I could try to find ways in which to get ideas faster. This requires some research, of course. I might find tips, tools, lists with topics I could approach. I could reduce the amount of time I spend trying to find ideas, which would help me, greatly.
The process of writing I'd like to keep the same, since it's what helps me share my ideas and what helps me get better at what I do.
Editing could be done faster, and better. I already improved the process by switching from a repetitive read - edit - read - edit process to a listen to article - edit process, which helps me detect mistakes way faster. What else could I do to make this process quicker? Well, if I could find a tool, let's say some AI software, that would fix most of the mistakes for me, then I could just listen to my article using a text-to-speech software so that I can only check whether everything is okay or not. If the editing software does its job well, I wouldn't have to spend more than a few minutes "editing".
Lastly, posting. In order for me to post I have to copy and paste the article and title to Hive, add the tags, find an image online and then press "post". Now, the biggest time-wasting part here is pressing "post", because in order to do that I have to get my laptop, since I do all this work on it. But what I could do is to try and prepare everything in advance, and then use my phone, which is much more accessible to me, to just hit "post". This would help me do this much faster than I normally would if I'd take my laptop to do it.
This applies only to writing, since it's something I do every day. But I could try to look at my job the same way.
I could try to find ways in which to cut more vegetables, faster. For example, instead of taking a reasonable amount to chop, I could instead try to learn how to cut as many vegetables as possible at once, so that I spend less time and effort doing the same thing over and over again.
I could also try to plan what things to carry and where ahead of time, so that I can pick as many things as possible and make less trips and spend less time walking. Need to carry multiple heavy things? Use a cart. Need to move things from one place to another? Think ahead of time what needs to be where, and take as many things as possible where they need to be.
Things like this could help me do my work just as fast, or faster, without putting too much effort into it. Why would I want to do something like this? Because trying very hard has proved to be quite ineffective. I just waste more energy and time trying to do something perfectly and in a certain "correct" order, in order to try to impress people who simply don't really care.
What I should do instead, and what you might want to focus on as well, is results. As long as you get the job done well, it shouldn't matter that much how you do it. This is one of those "vague" ideas that require trial, error and experience before you figure out how exactly you should do things, but once you get it right, you might be able to get more done while doing less.