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I was talking to a friend recently, and he asked me how I actually get a lot of stuff done. Like, physically, how… “How do you have time to write a newsletter? How do you make time to get a 20-mile ride in multiple times a week? How do you listen to a ton of podcasts or read all those books? How do you find time to copyright your work each quarter? How come you are never behind on invoicing?”
Here are a few of my tips. Maybe they’re obvious. But if not, maybe they’ll help. If you have your own life hacks related to efficiency or productivity, I’m all ears… drop them in the comments or send me an email.
One of my superpowers is to-do lists. For starters, I love making them. Mainly because I love checking things off. Step one for remembering to do something is physically writing it down. After coffee, when my brain starts humming and warming up, I usually grab a notepad and start jotting my to-dos down. I also like to preemptively add stuff to tomorrow’s list before the end of the day, when I’m thinking ahead and/or carrying stuff over.
Nothing is too small for my to-do lists. Start a load of laundry, CHECK. Send an email to so-and-so, CHECK. Charge camera batteries, CHECK. Get in a bike ride, CHECK. Why? Because if I don’t put it on there, it may not get done, and when I do list it, I’m incentivized to accomplish that simple task. That check is like a tiny dopamine drop or a Ms. Pac-Man pellet, it lights up some part of my brain and signals that I’m getting closer to my goal.
It’s also totally satisfying to add something I completed that wasn’t on the list initially, just so I can check it off. This is so that when I look back, I can be like ok… I did more than I thought I did and I did that specific thing. Anything I didn’t get to gets carried over and added to the next day’s list.
Just do it. If something is important to you, find the time to do it. At night, I can choose to watch trash TV for hours or I can read. I can practice Spanish on Duolingo or I can mindlessly scroll Twitter. I decide what gets my time. Nobody gets more hours in a day than you, they just use them wiser.
But it’s important to remember that time is relative. Parkinson's Law says that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. So if you give yourself all day to do something, you’ll take ALL day. If you allocate 8 hours to a project, you will actually get less done than working on it for 2 hours. Why? Because you’re filling most of that time with stuff that’s not important. Instead, practice the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off) or give yourself a hard deadline. Chances are if you give yourself 2 hours to finish a project, it’s going to be pretty good (and better still, it’ll be done). But if you give yourself 8 hours to finish, it’s only going to be marginally better. Give yourself a shorter time frame, and then put it down and walk away. If you really need to, come back at it later to re-read, approve, sign off on, edit, etc... you’ll be seeing it with fresh eyes and it’ll have taken a quarter of the time overall.
Batch processing. Or time chunking. This means focusing on one single task for a specific amount of time (Pomodoro also works well here). To me, it’s simple. I don’t see the point of sitting down to send one invoice or one email. So instead I block time and plan on hammering out 5 invoices while I’m in the invoicing zone. I usually try to send invoices on Friday mornings. That’s when I’m wrapping stuff up for the week. The consistency of it being done on the same day means I know I have to make time for it then.
Automating. DO NOT WASTE TIME doing something that a piece of software or an app can do better. I have a friend who is horrible at invoicing. Once, more than a year had gone by and he realized he’d forgotten to invoice a client and couldn’t find the receipts from that specific job. Imagine not wanting to get paid that badly.
There’s powerful free web-based invoicing called Wave Apps that I swear by (when I started out I was doing it manually in a Google spreadsheet!).
I use drop-down menus that my CPA and I created in Quickbooks to categorize and log business expenses (which I also used to do manually).
There is a great iPhone app called TurboScan that I use to take a picture of every receipt for a job and keep it together in one note (you can email it to yourself or a client as a PDF with one click).
MileIQ tracks my mileage driven on my iPhone, automatically, so I don’t have to try and retrace my steps on Google Maps.
For copyrighting images, I’ve written a few simple actions in Photoshop to batch resize, save, and move them to a folder that I then WeTransfer to the copyright lawyers. Highly recommended for menial tasks.
Most banks allow you to set up automation. So for example, when I get a deposit in my business checking account, it automatically transfers 30% to a savings account (for paying taxes later on). I also have my bank automatically send a flat fee to a personal checking account for discretionary spending monthly (fun stuff like restaurants and travel). I do this because every time I get paid I don’t want to have to think about it.
I also use Daffy (a donor-advised fund), and each week I have it automate a contribution, and charge my credit card $10. So by the end of the year, I have just over $500 to donate to a local charity of my choice.
And, on a much simpler note, I get a lot of emails asking similar things, so I’ve pre-written a couple of answers that I’ve saved in my drafts folder and I simply cut and paste them when applicable.
Multi-tasking is something I generally frown on because, for me, dividing my brain means I’m not doing either thing well. But, there are exceptions and it’s important to know what to combine. For example, I listen to podcasts or an audiobook when I’m driving or walking my dog.
Scheduling “me” time. I saved the best for last. It’s only taken 40+ years, but I’ve finally figured out that finding balance is key to my happiness. In this sense, balance could mean work/play or it could mean mental/physical. They’re related. I like to joke that riding my bike is my therapy. If I can get out for a 20-mile ride each day, I’m a much happier person. If I can walk the dog in the evening, it grounds me. Not only are they great stress relievers, but they’re also much-needed time away from screens and whatever work-related thing I’m thinking about. Aside from a little cardio, the pure physicality of moving also has a way of totally clearing my mind. And when I can free my mind, and let it start to wander things start flowing again (yes, this is why great ideas often come to you in the shower). So schedule it. Put it on your calendar or your to-do list. Don’t discount it, it’s vital to your well-being.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week with 5 things I was looking at and loving. And, I’ll leave you with this quote: "People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures." - F.M. Alexander
I like having a TO-DO list too. I like how you put even the small things on your TO-DO list! I think this will help me accomplish the small things I might forget.