One thing I don't hear a lot of people talk about is building prototypes. That's where I see a gigantic time savings. It doesn't have to be beautiful code, it just has to help me answer a question so I can make a decision about where to go next. That and tools. There have been many times where I've wanted to build a task-specific tool but justifying the time would be hard. Now I can create little tools like that, and it's a huge productivity boost.