Leverage

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

— Archimedes

Leverage is about getting more output for the same input.

It's a force multiplier.

The crowbar transforms a tiny amount of effort on its long end into a massive force on the other. For more force, you push harder, or you find a bigger crowbar. It is the perfect example of leverage.

First, mastery

Our day-to-day has many crowbar-like elements. Some forms of leverage are intuitive and have been around since the dawn of humankind, such as breadth and depth of knowledge, continuously mastering our craft, knowing tools inside out, or intentionally optimizing for energy levels.

Then, automation

Modern times have amplified leverage further, especially for creative workers. I mean, computers! The internet! And let’s not forget the reason we've heard so much about leverage in recent years: automation.

Through a slew of automation tools or automation features inside tools, we're increasingly able to avoid grunt work. Every manual process we automate frees up time, reduces errors, and lets us focus on what matters—things that are hard, things we love.

New opportunities for leverage haven’t stopped with automation.

Now, AI

As a species, we are poorly equipped to perceive both gradual transformation as well as exponential growth. And yet, it’s still clear for most that AI is changing the world at an unprecedented pace.

In just a few short years of accelerated progress, AI has become a:

• Personalized tutor: It can explain any concept, at any depth, using analogies tailored to you. It massively accelerates learning, which is a fundamental form of leverage (see “knowledge and tools” section above).
• Programmer for everyone: For engineers, it writes boilerplate code, prototypes, suggests solutions, and hunts for bugs. For non-engineers, it builds autonomy. Want to analyze data from a CSV? Build a small tool to automate a task? Everyone can now build their own simple programs, surfacing leverage previously reserved for those who code.
• Refactoring tool: Long-lived projects like ours tend to accumulate technical debt, which requires significant investments in refactoring. AI is particularly good when a validation loop is established, speeding up refactoring dramatically.
• Collaborator: When writing, it can be your brainstorming partner or your editor.
• Adversary: It can also be a fierce critic, exposing flaws and gaps in your thinking. This makes your final output stronger and more resilient.
• Accelerator for research and collaboration: It can digest lengthy discussions or dense research papers and give you the gist in seconds, reducing the overhead of staying up-to-date.

Used effectively and consistently, AI is a clear, irrefutable productivity multiplier.

I've experienced this myself, and I've seen many others experiencing it, too. And it's clear we're just starting to figure out how to take advantage of it all.

I believe a monumental increase in individual and collective velocity is not just possible but a necessary step for companies with high ambition. This means shipping projects faster, tackling more ambitious challenges, and raising the quality floor for most of our work.

Here’s why

Our industry is not standing still. The teams and companies that master leverage will define the next decade. In fact, it’s already happening. Here’s the Lean AI leaderboard as of Sep. 16:

This is about more than just efficiency; it's about companies sharpening their ability to ship, iterate, innovate, lead, and ultimately have a thriving business.

Here’s how

Building a thriving business requires a culture where everyone is actively seeking and creating leverage, day in and day out.

So reserve a moment every week to explore and invest in your individual/team/company leverage. Build a habit out of it. Actively discuss the topic with others.

Explore a new tool and share it with your colleagues. Automate a workflow. Get an LLM to teach you an important concept. Have it criticize your spec, or write some code you need. Next time you're blocked by a teammate, attempt to solve it yourself. Leverage it to parallelize tasks (data processing, investigations, programming, etc.). Your discovery could be your team's next big advantage.

Make time for it

Leverage doesn’t happen accidentally. It stems from deliberate actions. Mastery has always required continuous learning, not just new information, but also new tools and ways of working.

Through intentionality and rigor in your day-to-day schedule, protect time to explore. Use it to learn, automate, or test new approaches. Small, consistent investments compound. One hour automating one report will save you four hours over the next month alone. A whole week next year.

This is a prerequisite for the level of ambition required to build a legacy. It's an asset that will pay for itself almost immediately in freed-up time, increased impact, and more fulfilling work.

Thanks to Evert Velthuizen, Nadia Vatalidis, Brenna Loury, and Amir Salihefendic for their feedback on a post called “Leverage” that I shared internally at Doist. This blog post is adapted from it.