The Third Time Rule

Today's teaching idea: The Third Time Rule.

The third time you do the same task the same way, stop. That is your signal. You are no longer doing work, you are paying a tax, and the third repetition proves the task is stable enough to build a tool for.

I run 42 tools in my faculty stack. I never wrote a line of code for any of them. Each one started the same way: I caught myself doing something for the third time, wrote down how I do it, and turned my way into instructions an assistant could follow.

The trap most faculty fall into is building a tool for the hardest task first. Wrong target. Difficulty is not the signal. Repetition is. A tool for a task you do twice a semester saves you minutes. A tool for a task you do every week pays you back until the day you retire.

So here is today's question: what task did you catch yourself doing for the third time this week? Name it in the comments. Naming the target is the first phase of building the tool.