Step 2: Automate to Execute
To truly be effective at the important things I need to first get through the mindless things. I can’t count how much time I regularly waste on last minute grocery shopping, trying to figure out what I’ll make for dinner, paying bills, searching for information online, and on and on…
To fix this issue my plan is to get as many of these things off my plate as I possibly can by implementing some of the amazing Scale My Life hacks I’ve discovered so far this year.
Dinner:
Trying to figure out what I’ll have for dinner is time consuming and it can sometimes even starts fights (“I’m sorry but I just don’t want breakfast for dinner again tonight”). To fix this issue my girlfriend and I are going to try a new 2 week at a time meal plan. Using ‘Plan to Eat’ the amazing meal plan and grocery-list app I found during my cooking challenge we’re going to pre-plan all our dinner’s way in advance so we’re not scrambling last minute every evening.
And if we don’t know to make for dinner we’ve got that covered too! So we’re not arguing over meal ideas we’re going to try spicing things up with a few meals from some really cool random meal generators I found online called “What the Fuck Should I Make For Dinner?” and “Random-Recipes.com.”
Bills & Budget:
Paying bills on time and tracking my spending may be time consuming but it’s also kind of necessary if I’m ever going to get out of debt. Normally I go through each month spending chaotically and then take a couple hours at the end of the month to account for my (over) spending. This wasn’t just time consuming but it really wasn’t helping me stay under budget. My new plan is to fully implement my friend Molly’s strategy that I learned during my budget challenge to create a “Zero-Based Budget” with Dave Ramsay’s monthly cash flow plan.
By pre-planning where my money is going at the beginning of my month I’ll never have to worry about going broke or not being able to pay my bills. And with this new system I can also automate all of my bills as automatic payments so I’m not spending time paying them manually or stressing whether they got paid on time.
Step 3: Outsource the Little Stuff
Doing research online, replying to emails, calling to book appointments, scheduling your calendar, etc the reality is time consuming tasks need to get done. The question though is do these tasks have to be done by you?
I’m really interested in experimenting with a personal assistant service. After reading the Four Hour Work Week by my favorite podcast and life hack guru Tim Ferriss and seeing what an impact it made for him and many of the top business professionals from around the world it really got me thinking; it’s usually 20% of your tasks that end up taking up 80% of your time, so if I could just outsource that bottom 20% I could potentially gain back countless hours in my day.
I’m still investigating companies and costs but from what I’ve seen it’s insanely inexpensive for the work you can get (like less than $4/hour) so I’ve decided to give it a shot with something simple. One of my biggest frustrations is my out of control email inbox. I’ve got an overflow of spam, newsletters, reference material and pending jobs that have caused my inbox to become an unfunctional mess. I’m going to get them to reorganize, categorize and clean out all of my email inboxes and see if I can get myself back to ‘Inbox Zero.’
I will keep you posted on this experiment but if this interests you at all I would highly recommend checking out this amazing and intriguing article on Tim’s blog and if you’re feeling brave maybe give it a try!
“Honey has completed her first project for me: research on the person Esquire has chosen as the Sexiest Woman Alive. I’ve been assigned to write a profile of this woman, and I really don’t want to have to slog through all the heavy-breathing fan websites about her. When I open Honey’s file, I have this reaction: America is f*cked. There are charts. There are section headers. There is a well-organized breakdown of her pets, measurements, and favorite foods (e.g., swordfish). If all Bangalorians are like Honey, I pity Americans about to graduate college. They’re up against a hungry, polite, Excel-proficient Indian army.”
