Track, Hack and Attack: My First Named Method

On November 25, 2011, I published the first named method of my career. The post called it "systematically hacking your workday for maximum effectiveness using what I'm calling the Track, Hack and Attack method."

Fifteen years of practice sharpened every phase. What started as a workday optimization routine matured into the simplification engine underneath everything I teach: the method that decides what deserves to stay in your week at all. This page is the canonical current version, with the 2011 receipts attached.

TL;DR: Track, Hack and Attack is a 3-phase method for reclaiming your time. Track: audit where your time actually goes. Hack: unpack the components from first principles and ask why each exists. Attack: ruthlessly automate, delegate or eliminate. I named the method in November 2011, and the modern version powers the audits behind my 3.5-day workweek.

About the author: I'm Marissa Brassfield. I've published productivity methods at Ridiculously Efficient since 2011, and Track, Hack and Attack was the first one I named, in November of that year. The method's mature form produced the audit that cut 60% of my recurring commitments and the 3.5-day workweek I've run since March 16, 2023. Since November 2022 I've coached 500+ senior leaders through the same three phases.

What Is Track, Hack and Attack?

Three phases, in strict order:

1. Track: audit your time. Measure a real week before changing anything.
2. Hack: unpack the week's component parts from first principles. Ask why each block exists and whether the original reason survives contact with daylight.
3. Attack: ruthlessly automate, delegate or eliminate. Remove the work from your plate through whichever door fits.

The order carries the discipline. Most people attack first, declaring war on a calendar they've never actually measured, and the war produces a tidier version of the same overload. Measurement first, understanding second, removal third.

Phase 1: Track

The 2011 version opened with the line I still teach:

You cannot improve what you cannot measure. Track every aspect of your workday for a week: work periods, breaks, distractions, downtime, phone calls or text messages, meetings.

My favorite example then remains my favorite now. Jim Donald, who ran Starbucks in the mid-2000s, had his assistant build a monthly pie chart of how his time was actually spent, then compared it against predetermined goals. A CEO of a global company measured his month the way a CFO measures cash, and he had company: Harvard's landmark study of CEO calendars found the ones who manage time deliberately track it first.

The 2026 version takes less effort than the 2011 one: your calendar export, your screen-time report, and one honest week of notes produce the whole picture. The tooling changed. The discipline of looking held.

Phase 2: Hack

Tracking shows you where the time goes. Hacking asks whether any of it should. This is first-principles work: decompose each recurring block into the job it claims to do, then interrogate the job. The two questions from the 2011 original still cut deepest:

Why is it done this way? Is there a better way?

The modern version adds a third question, the one that powers my quarterly audits: what would happen over the next 14 days if this disappeared? Most calendars fail the question, and the failure is the finding. Decision fatigue compounds the case: every recurring commitment costs attention beyond its minutes, so a block that survives the audit has to earn both.

Phase 3: Attack

The 2011 attack meant executing the optimized day harder. The 2026 attack means removing the work entirely, through one of three doors, checked in order:

1. Eliminate. The strongest move. If the block failed the 14-day question, delete it and leave the space empty. Work expands to fill the time available; the attack reverses the expansion, and the company-scale trials agree the output survives: Microsoft Japan's compressed week lifted productivity near 40%, and 56 of 61 companies in the UK's pilot kept the shorter week.
2. Automate. The AI era moved this door wide open. My working notes on where AI genuinely saves founder time and what to do with the hours it frees are both live on this site.
3. Delegate. Last, deliberately. Delegation without the first two doors just relocates unexamined work onto someone else's plate.

Add Leave it as the verdict for whatever survives phase 2 honestly, and the four verdicts spell LEAD: Leave it, Eliminate, Automate, Delegate. That's the margin shorthand inside my guided elimination audit, free with membership.

Then repeat. The original prescribed the cadence, and it held up: monthly to start, quarterly once you've gotten into a good groove.

What the Method Became

Fifteen years of repetitions turned Track, Hack and Attack into the engine behind bigger structures. The tracked week became the energy audit. The hacked calendar became the Three Day Types. The attacked schedule became a 3.5-day workweek, and the freed hours got a philosophy of their own in earned laziness.

The method scaled down, too. One dreaded Tuesday afternoon responds to the same three phases as a whole operating model. And the stakes of skipping it keep rising: Gallup's burnout research points at unmanaged workload as a leading driver, which is another name for a calendar nobody ever tracked.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Track, Hack and Attack method?

A 3-phase time-reclamation method: audit where your time actually goes (track), unpack each commitment from first principles (hack), then ruthlessly automate, delegate or eliminate (attack). The order is the discipline.

Who created Track, Hack and Attack?

I did: Marissa Brassfield, published on this site November 25, 2011, as the first named method of my career. The current version reflects 15 years of practice on my own calendar and my clients'.

How often should you run Track, Hack and Attack?

Monthly to start, quarterly once you've gotten into a good groove. That cadence comes from the 2011 original and still matches what I run with coaching clients.

How is this different from a regular time audit?

A time audit is phase 1 of 3. Tracking without the first-principles pass produces awareness without change, and attacking without the first two phases optimizes work that deserved deletion. The method's value lives in the sequence.

Run Phase 1 This Week

One week of honest tracking costs you almost nothing and starts everything. Your calendar already holds the data.

What would your pie chart show?

If you want the three phases run with a guide, a Strategic Clarity Session compresses the diagnosis into 60 minutes. And The Simplicity Protocol newsletter delivers one elimination strategy every Tuesday, implementable in 20 minutes or less.