Drop Needless Order
For each pair of steps ask whether the second needs the first’s output; cut every order it does not; stop when a shuffle gives the same result.
Formerly Unsequence
The Unfortunates: chapters loose in a box, read in any order.
Seen in B. S. Johnson, The Unfortunates, 1969
Try it on your work
List the steps by which you make the thing you're working on. For each pair of steps, ask whether the second truly needs the first's output. Remove every order that it does not. Stop when you can perform the steps in a shuffled order and the result is the same.
Take the sections of your project's text. Cut every "first", "then", "before" and "after" that is not a real dependency. Stop when the sections can be read in any order and each still makes sense alone.
Map your process as tasks with arrows only where one needs another's output. Delete every other arrow. Stop when the map has no arrows you cannot justify by a handover. What remains is the real critical path; everything else was convention.
How it has been used
Network scheduling separates activities from the precedence relationships between them. NASA uses these dependency maps to identify the critical path—the sequence that truly determines duration—and the float available elsewhere. Once the real dependencies are visible, work outside that chain can begin earlier or proceed in parallel instead of waiting for an inherited sequence.
Where it leads
Grouped under Shake up the order it is in