Living life efficiently means having more time to do the things you enjoy most. Ask yourself the following questions when you’re stuck spinning your wheels.
1. Can you reuse a previous work or process to accomplish the task?
Starting from scratch every time sucks. Archiving bits and pieces along the way make future tasks way more efficient. For example, utilizing CSS frameworks and libraries has made my life as a designer infinitely better.
2. What is the payoff vs activity costs?
This is all about measuring the return on your time. Associate value with every item on your to do list. If the costs is overshadowing the value, it’s time to move on to something else or reevaluate your process.
3. Can you automate or eliminate?
This goes back to steps 1 & 2. Perhaps you can reuse from previous experience, outsource (see #6) or even cut out low-value items altogether. Eliminate and/or automate where possible.
4. Is it healthy?
Can you justify your activities as being beneficial to your health, relationships, or career? If not, eliminate them.
5. Is it enjoyable?
Are you doing something you enjoy? If not, find another way to accomplish it, or find a way to enjoy it. If neither of those options are available, move on to #6.
6. Can you pay someone else to do it?
When you start assigning value to your time, outsourcing starts to make a lot of sense. Especially when you factor in the fact that time is the only thing you can’t recoup in life. Sites like Cragislist, GetFriday, and Fiverr are great resources for unloading the more mundane and redundant activities of life.
7. How is it going to make you money?
If the answer is it isn’t, and it’s not adding to your quality of life, automate it, eliminate it or pay someone else to do it.
Furthermore…
Sometimes your job is going to suck and there’s no way around it (even the Beatles got tired of being the Beatles). Everyone occasionally has to suck it up and grind through to pay the bills. But that isn’t to say that you have to carry on with the status quo. 99% of the time there is a smarter/better way of doing things. It will take discipline, but by assigning value to your time and tasks, you’ll be able to assess what’s necessary, what’s not, and how to spend time more efficiently so you can move on to the things in life you enjoy most.
How do you manage your time wisely. Leave a comment below with your personal tips and tricks as well as any feedback you have for the above suggestions.