How much of your day do you spend doing non essential tasks? Everyone has at least a few of these simple little tasks that decrease our productivity and take away from our time to do the things we want.
How much time per day do you spend on tasks that could be eliminated? Here lately I have been trying to figure out how to maintain my lifestyle I have now, while working less. One of the most useful resources I discovered was to eliminate unnecessary things that I did. Especially, parts of my daily routine that were pointless or gave very little benefit.
You obviously shouldn’t eliminate things like going to work or brushing your teeth. But what about stuff like checking your email frequently or how about running out to pay a bill as soon as you get it in the mail.
I used to rush out and pay bills as soon as I got them. This would help me make sure that I never received a late fee etc. But once I started cutting down on the extra tasks I figured out that my bills weren’t due for at least 2 to 3 weeks after I got the bill. So I then figured out a day were none of them would be past due. I now go out and pay all the bills in under 1 hour each month, instead of an hour 8 different days. I also set up some automatic bill payments so I can just forget about them and only check them every once in awhile for anything that might be off.
In my above example that is one way that I have increased my amount of time by working smarter and not harder.
Here are some other suggestions for things you guys could do in order to increase your extra time.
- Consolidate trips into town
- Do more work while at work, instead of bringing it home
- Cut back on emails, instant messages, and texting
- Clean as you go, in order to reduce the days you have to clean
- At your office you could reduce clients, throw away junk, reorganize your day, stop reading statistics constantly, cut back on meetings
- Outsource some things if you can
- Sleep less, most people require about 7 hours per day. Much more than that is wasted time.
- Try to do more work from home
- Shorten your commute time to work
- Let your kids help you with housework and routine tasks
- Don’t go around in circles. Spend less time doing the same tasks over and over again. Do it once then move on if it’s something you can.
- Buy things in bulk. If you need to buy dog food, then buy it for the next 6 months. It will probably be cheaper to buy larger quantities anyways.
- Get organized today
The list could go on forever and ever. The main thing to take away from today’s lesson is to make sure you eliminate everything you can. Your stress will be lower and you will end up with much more extra time at the end of the day. Good Luck!