In engineering, new inventions promise faster and safer cars than what exist today. The frontier can shift.

In your work, there’s always the possibility of radical changes that might break the current frontier. Maybe you find a technique that lets you get much more...

If you're far from edge, optimize. Treat each element in isolation and improve it.Want to improve your work? Just reorganize and get more done!

If you're on the productive frontier, improvement comes from trade-offs. Would you rather have a clean house or m...

How should you compare these three designs?

The third option is obviously worse than the first two - it's slow and dangerous. But between the other two is a question of values. Maybe a race car driver would prefer faster at the cost of some safety. Maybe the soccer mom wants safe...

What if there are more designs than the presented three? Such possibilities exist in some situations, surely with habits and situations. Here, putting them all on a graph, we can see that any of the ones on the inside of the frontier are bad choices.

Why?

Because there’s alwa...

Efficient frontiers reveal a general pattern. When you’re below the frontier, you can always improve simply by optimizing your choice. You can make a better choice by just pick an option that has more of what you want.

When you’re on the frontier, however, the only way to m...

Let's say you plot all your schedules and leisures in a graph, it shows all your productive possibilities, time allotment, and situations of good work and sudden work.

Now, is your situation is Pareto efficient?

If we’re below the frontier, improvements is needed. We...