LifestyleDesignUnleashed

photo credit: exfordy

It’s a sad fact of life that simple, everyday tasks can take up a lot of time each week. Now if you enjoy those everyday tasks then that’s fine. For example I love to cook and so spending time preparing delicious meals is a pleasure to me. But if it’s not your cup of tea then consider finding ways to eliminate or automate these tasks. The more you do this, the less time you will have to spend on boring “practical” chores and the more time you can spend doing what you love instead.

So why not take some time to watch how you spend your time over the next few weeks. What are the chores that you do that you’d rather just rush through? Which jobs seem to eat up your time with no obvious benefit? What would you like to get rid of so that you can live a more joyful life?

I’d like to offer up a few ideas and suggestions that I have been experimenting with and have found greatly reduced the time that these everyday tasks take.

Junk Mail

Do you get lots of junk mail? I know I did up until recently. All those letters and brochures that are of no interest to you. That take up time to open, shred, recycle or whatever. It’s just a pointless annoyance for me.

But there are services out there which will take your details off these mailing lists which will greatly simplify your mail. In this way you can be far more certain that anything which comes through your letterbox is actually important and/or interesting and can be focused on without worrying about all the junk.

The same applies for emails and blogs. If  you’re not getting lots of value from being on a mailing list or from a blog that you subscribe to then just drop them. Many of us get hundreds of emails each week if not more and if you’re growing an online business you’re likely to see these numbers grow all the time.

Unsubscribe from the ones that don’t interest you and also add a spam filter to get rid of spam so that once again you are simplifying your online activities. Doing this can drop down your email load to just a handful of messages each week that really matter which makes clearing your inbox not only quicker but also more enjoyable because you only get the messages that you want.

Finances

Household bills need to be paid. Those brown envelopes keep on arriving. It’s pretty depressing to receive them, they take time to process and you need to keep ontop of them if you’re not going to receive additional charges or worse. Boring, boring, boring.

Many companies now offer online billing however and will let you set up with them so that your bills are paid automatically out of your bank account each month. The only paper bill you’ll ever receive will likely be if there’s been a problem with your payment.

So I recently set up an extra current account just to use for bill payments. I pay cash into it, have set up all my bills to go out automatically and then once a month can just check that everything has gone out. This means again less time spent on boring chores.

Another way to automate your finances is to set up a savings account and agreeing with your bank to pay a certain sum of money in from your current account each month without you having to do anything.

More and more banks now offer online banking too and this can be very useful for checking your bank balance, seeing whether bills have gone out and/or paying bills automatically and further reduce the time spent on boring tasks.

Shopping

Shopping for some things can be exciting. For me it’s technology. For some people it’s clothes. But there are also other things that are rather more boring for many people. An example of this might be going grocery shopping after a long week at work. Or needing to replace a pair of glasses you’ve broken. We’re talking about the kind of shopping you *need* to do rather than the shopping you *want* to do.

More and more supermarkets now offer online shopping and various other companies will let you buy all sorts of things quickly and easily online.

For example I have an account set up with an online optician so if I need new glasses my prescription is all set up and saved into my account. I just quickly select the frame and make my order. I also have an account set up with a supplier of ink cartridges. Once I log in, this site remembers everything – my name, address, which cartridges I used and so on. It literally takes me about 30 seconds and 5 clicks of my mouse to order new ink cartridges that arrive within a day or two.

Now of course setting up these services to begin with takes a little time but once they’re up and running you will find that you can save a considerable amount of time each week to spend on more enjoyable things.

Get Organized

Get an address book so you can remember contact details rather than hunting around for scraps of paper. Set up Google Calendar so you can easily remember birthdays and other special events (I have mine set up to send a text to my phone a week beforehand so I don’t have to think about it).

Also set up a paperwork file with sections for your car insurance, bank statements and so on so again it is easy to lay your hands on any piece of paperwork you might need quickly and easily.

Getting Help

Lastly consider getting yourself a virtual assistant who can potentially help you with all sorts of tasks. Whether that’s booking a hotel, organizing a hire car, finding a local dry cleaners or whatever having someone doing these small tasks for you can make life a lot easier (and make things run a lot smoother to boot).

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