3 Productivity Hacks to Clear up your Schedule

The professional world is a huge time suck. If you’re not careful you’ll find yourself not being able to do what you want to do. This can get depressing fast, trust me. But through the years I found 3 simple productivity hacks that helped me free up a lot of time. I was able to attend my friend’s weddings and spend more time with family. I’d like to share those productivity hacks with you.

When I first started my professional career I would always tell my family and friends that I was busy. Looking back now I’m not sure what I was busy with. It’s not like I had that much work. I get it, leaving your parent’s house and becoming an adult gets a bit overwhelming. With these 3 productivity hacks, I believe that you can free up more time and have more “you” time. Having that extra few hours of free time is huge in this cold harsh world. So, follow along as we run through these hacks!

Productivity Hack #1: Wake up Early

The first hack we have is a simple one. Wake up early! I personally wake up at 4:30 am just to beat traffic and get that workout in. Once I get that workout in I’ve completed taking care of my body and that frees up almost 2 hours (if you include traffic both ways). Waking up early gives you an extra hour to get other mundane tasks out of the way.

For me, when I wake up early I am able to get a lot of things done. I am able to wash my dishes, clean my house, and get some reading in. With that extra time in the morning, I’m also able to eat a healthy and whole breakfast. Which is important for productivity and energy throughout the day. Waking up early and getting these things done allows you to practically automate simple tasks that have to get done. Once you have all the mundane tasks out of the way that you can now focus your day on other more important tasks. This leads us to my next productivity hack.

Productivity Hack #2: Bundle Administrative Activities

Batching administrative activities has saved me many hours throughout my week. What I mean by batching, is I only check my mail, take out the trash, and grocery shop at specific times. Meaning I only do those activities once a week and usually on the same day. That clears up my day-to-day schedule. This way I can work on other more important tasks for longer periods at a time. While spending one day (usually Sunday) shopping for groceries, taking out the trash, and checking my mail.

On top of that, the last thing I want to do when I leave for work or come back from a long day is take out the trash. Sunday’s for me are just the day that I use to prepare for my week. I make sure that I am set up for a fresh start come Monday.

Being able to bundle those simple but time-consuming tasks will give you back more time than you think throughout the week. You might be thinking why to put so much emphasis on this. Think about it this way most of your problems come from 2 to 3 issues in your life. If you free up your time you get more time to solve those problems.

You should also consider looking into Hello Alfred to clean your apartment or house. If you are unaware of Hello Alfred, they are a service-based company that caters to making your life easier. Some of the services they offer include grocery shopping, dropping off/picking up laundry & dry cleaning, coordinating clothing/shoe repairs, picking up prescriptions, and much more!

I certainly believe that having more efficiency in your life can improve your productivity level. Give this a shot. Worse that can happen is you go back to what you were doing before.

Productivity Hack #3: Eliminate the Decision Bottleneck

This is a tough thing for most people to do. I get you to want absolute control over your life. It’s hard to give up control to even a little part of your life. But there are ways to give up the decisions you make. A lot of the decisions you will be making day to day are redundant and can be accomplished without your presence needed. Some of them don’t even cost a lot of money.

For example, let’s discuss groceries. In my personal life, I don’t have a crazy diet plan that has all these different meals. What I do is pretty simple. I pick a few items that I know I like and I get those groceries per month and then I switch it up every month or so. This makes it so much easier to just meal prep every week and fuel your body.

There are so many companies out there that also make meal prepping easy. I used a company called Freshly for at least one meal a day (dinner). I would then have a weekly grocery order scheduled once per week at a time I knew I would be at my house. Amazon and Walmart have changed the grocery and delivery business. To make life more convenient for you. Utilizing the tools at your disposal is key to freeing up your time.

Takeaway

This is an exhaustive list and I’ve only provided what has worked for me. I encourage you to read every article and book you can get your hands on regarding productivity. Trust me it will save your life. Being efficient with your time is a big asset to you when you hit the professional world. If you don’t use your time wisely you’ll catch yourself having no time to enjoy the simple things in life.

Go out there and find what you love to do and find ways to be more efficient at it. Spend time with your family and friends and less time doing mundane tasks.

If you want to learn more about freeing up more time, read a 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferris. This is a time savers playbook. I’ve written a few other articles on productivity check them out here and here.