Unfortunately, that’s not possible. The next best thing we can do is to help you get more done in the time you have. That starts off by asking yourself, “Do you need to be the one that completes everything on your to-do list?”
Let’s come back to that question. First, if we all looked at our lives there are some common tasks that are the same. We need to eat. That means getting groceries, cleaning, and cooking. We need to clean. That means getting cleaning supplies and finding the time to clean.
You need to outsource
Now we all need to eat. The problem is how to get food worth eating. It’s easy to get fast food or food that you can microwave. A lot of times it’s actually delicious. That makes sense because food scientists, yes that is a thing, spend an inordinate time trying to convince your palate that the fast food or junk food you are eating is delicious.
Not so delicious that you don’t want to eat more. Just delicious enough for you to eat it and probably a bit too much of it. Diabolical, I know.
No, I’m talking about good-for-you food that tastes delicious. That takes time. Time I don’t like to spend.
There’s a few options:
1. Find ways to minimize time
2. Have it done for you
How to save time and still eat good food
Let’s break down number 1. Eating good food requires going to the right grocery stores and getting the right high-quality ingredients. That takes time. Not just time spent at the grocery store, but time to get ready, drive, park, pick up the stuff, and wait in line.
Fortunately, there’s an app for that. A few actually. You can have Whole Foods delivered to you from Amazon for free within 1 hour. There’s also the app Instacart. You end up paying a little more for Instacart, but it even goes to Costco for you without you needing to be a member.
Now you can focus on the more fun part, actually cooking. That starts with getting the ingredients ready. Maybe, you don’t like to do that either. I know I don’t.
There are services that will do all the shopping for you and send you the perfect quantity of materials. It even sends you the recipe and you can pick what you want to eat. Services like Blue Apron will let you shop recipes and then send you everything you need to make it.
My brother loves to do this. He’s an ER resident and enjoys cooking, but just doesn’t have the time to research what he wants to eat and buy all the ingredients. He buys the basics and let’s Blue Apron send him the rest of what he needs.
Lastly, if you are like my wife and I you don’t like any part of cooking, but love to eat. There are services for you as well. Meal delivery services like Trifecta will send you ready to cook meals. They are as healthy as can be and you can choose between different types of food. We choose paleo, but there are others as well. You just put it in the microwave, warm it up, and it’s ready to eat.
The food is pretty good and most importantly healthy. It even has calories and nutrients on there, so I can plan out the rest of the food I can eat in that day.
Cleanliness without a time sink
We all like to have a clean place to live. It’s personally hard for me to free up my mind for creative activities if I see a ton of stuff everywhere. Or a bunch of dust mites.
There’re two steps that I’ve done to try and keep my apartment from becoming a den of filth:
1. Spot cleaning
2. One deep clean a month
Have you ever been into a room that you haven’t used in a while? What did you notice? Dust everywhere. How does it even get in there? It’s hard to say. One thing is for sure: dust will find a way.
This typically shows up on the floor. Dust everywhere. Even more so for us with pets. Dust and dog hair. There was no way I could wait till the end of the month to do a deep clean. The dust would take over my small apartment.
I’ve enlisted help. I got a Roomba You can get simple ones that do most of the work. It’ll vacuum around the house/apartment and even come back to charging station when it’s done.
You can even get fancy ones that you can control with Wi-Fi. They work best when there is your place is all one level.
This will only keep your place clean for so long, which is why I invest in one deep clean a month. The key word is invest. It’s either an investment of time or money. There’s only so many hours in a day, and I’d prefer not to clean.
I can recognize the mental health benefits of having a clean place though. And I always thought that hiring someone to clean my place was a needless expense and one that I couldn’t afford. Something for just the uber wealthy.
I even did a quick google search one day when I was really busy and the dust was winning. $100 an hour for a maid? Would have been nice at the time, but I was a resident and that was way more than I could afford.
One day someone told me about Taskrabbit. You can use it to find people who will do common tasks such as helping you move or clean your house. I was able to find someone for $35/hr. My whole place could be cleaned for about $100. Now that was well worth it.
So now, take all that time you saved and do more of what only you can do.
This is something that I’ve been battling for a while. My laptop has been showing signs of its age. It used to get me through the day. Now I have to charge it every few hours. Opening up more than a few tabs causes it to need to think for minutes and everything takes a lot longer than it used to.
Not to say it’s all the computer’s fault, I’ve been asking much more of it than I used to as well. These days I do some basic video and image editing. I also use it for work. It’s on and doing something all day. Still, it’s been working well since I bought it in mid-2015, much longer than the typical 3 years I had laptops before it.
You would think that it’d be a simple and rational decision to go and look for a new laptop. Almost all my work is done on it whether in medicine, the blog, or my other businesses, but it’s been hard to let go. It still works. It’s a little slow but doesn’t have any major problems.
A couple of new versions of it came out through the past few years. Before this one, I would replace my laptop every 3-4 years due to necessity. Something would break and it would be cheaper to buy a new laptop than fix it. It seems like such a large expense. And my laptop still works.
Well, my amazing wife got me a new laptop. She knew I was being stubborn and not buying one even though I needed it. Or she was sick of me complaining about my current laptop. And you know what? I should have replaced it years ago. I lost countless hours of productivity throughout the years due to being stubborn.
I can see now all the patches I had put in my day to work around a slow laptop. I had bought that laptop as an intern and had to skimp to afford it. It had minimal specs. All that I could afford. There were some good times. I had to get creative and outsource stuff that I couldn’t do on my computer. Or it would take too long.
There were other times I suffered through and did things myself. And it took a lot longer than it should have. I know now that I was limiting myself. Trying to cut a tree with a dull ax. My laptop was my tool of the trade and because it got the job done. Well, eventually. It doesn’t mean it was right for the job.
What are the tools of your trade? Do you keep an eye out when it’s time to upgrade them?
We normally take 1-2 long plane rides a year, and I actually look forward to them. I’ll have my trusty Turtle neck pillow, eye mask, headphones charger, kindle, laptop, and of course phone. I’ll even often bring a hardcopy of a book that’s been gathering dust on my bookshelf.
Why do all this?
Because the time spent on an airplane feels magical. I know what you’re thinking. No, I don’t travel first-class or even business. I’m always in economy seats. Those hours are magical because I’m in a productivity flow state. I get more done in a few hours than the rest of the week, if not month.
That comes down to one reason: no distractions. No text messages, news alerts, no emails. And importantly, no internet. Yes, I know that planes have the internet these days. But if I had gotten it my productivity would plummet. I would check Reddit or Facebook and lose myself down a rabbit hole of unproductivity.
Instead, I’m able to do some light reading, listen to a few podcasts, even watch an episode or two of a show I’ve been putting off. I’ll even have time in the middle for a nap.
Often, I’ll get more done in those 12 hours than I had gotten done in the whole week before. I’m energised when I land. I had gotten so much done that I could enjoy the trip with no guilt. And there was still the return trip!
After my last trip, I thought there had to be a way I could recreate this feeling and productivity. There was! It’s called airplane mode. I wish it was as simple as turning it on.
I try to mimic the experience best I can. Instead of sitting on my sofa with my laptop, I’ll go to sit on the desk. I made sure to not have a desk chair that is too comfy. I’ll turn off the wifi to not give me any temptations and set the clock. The clock could be an hour or two depending on how much I need to get done.
I’ll have my kindle and laptop and even a physical book. I can’t say I can be productive for 12 hours straight like I can on a plane. But an hour or two that acting like I’m on a plane is often more productive than a full day otherwise. Like my brain tricks me into thinking I need to eat that cookie, I trick it into being productive.
If you meet me before, you know I love sweets. Chocolates, gummy bears, cakes, cookies. Yum. I could be sitting working on a blogpost or at work and all a sudden get a constant craving. Some days I’d give in. Go out of my way to get something sweet. Other days, I’d have some willpower and be able to resist. Over the years, I’ve been able to get better at resisting the sugar fiend inside me.
I can still feel it though, deep inside. Even now, I’d love some toffee or some hot chocolate. Now imagine instead, my phone was vibrating. Of course, I’d pick it up. A text message. Let me do a quick reply. Oh, Instagram notification. Who posted something? And so on. All a sudden I’ve lost track of time and it’s an hour later.
Worse yet, at least with my sweet cravings, I’ll know that I should stop and not eat the whole box. With my phone or laptop the various notifications, beeps, vibrations are almost endless. It even sometimes feels productive. Let me reply to this email. Oh, a new article on my favorite blog, well that’s a productive use of my time. Let me read that too.
It’s late afternoon and I haven’t gotten a single thing done on my to-do list. No emails to reply to though! Yep, and all those new blog posts, read! In a sense, technology is worse than sugar. At least after the first few bites of anything sweet, I realize I shouldn’t be eating too much and am usually able to stop. My use of technology could be endless and that guilt is rarely there. I’m not usually doing anything that unproductive. There’s usually some benefit in my interaction with technology.
But that’s the problem, there’s no negative feedback loop. If anything, there’s a small positive feedback loop. I’m getting stuff done. And I keep going. But that blog post I wanted to write sits there as a blank word doc. I’ve let the world make my schedule instead of sticking to what I want to have done. I’ve been able to re-wire my brain a bit with my technology use. Before I sit down on my laptop or phone, I try to think of what I need to do with using it. I turn on do not disturb.
I try to be a little more intentional with my time. Rarely will an email or text need a reply right away. I’ve actually found that people are appreciative of this: if I respond right away then they feel the need to as well. I changed the ringtone for a handful of people in my phone so that it rings even on do not disturb. My wife. My parents. Just in case. I’ll send a quick text saying I’m busy though and ask if I can call them back in a bit.
Like with sweets, I’ll put my phone a little further away. Out of arm’s reach. This helps me resist the urge to grab it when there’s a second of downtime. I just got an email. It can wait. Let me finish this post.
We normally take 1-2 long plane rides a year, and I actually look forward to them. I’ll have my trusty Turtle neck pillow, eye mask, headphones charger, kindle, laptop, and of course phone. I’ll even often bring a hardcopy of a book that’s been gathering dust on my bookshelf.
Why do all this?
Because the time spent on an airplane feels magical. I know what you’re thinking. No, I don’t travel first-class or even business. I’m always in economy seats. Those hours are magical because I’m in a productivity flow state. I get more done in a few hours than the rest of the week, if not month.
That comes down to one reason: no distractions. No text messages, news alerts, no emails. And importantly, no internet. Yes, I know that planes have the internet these days. But if I had gotten it my productivity would plummet. I would check Reddit or Facebook and lose myself down a rabbit hole of unproductivity.
Instead, I’m able to do some light reading, listen to a few podcasts, even watch an episode or two of a show I’ve been putting off. I’ll even have time in the middle for a nap.
Often, I’ll get more done in those 12 hours than I had gotten done in the whole week before. I’m energised when I land. I had gotten so much done that I could enjoy the trip with no guilt. And there was still the return trip!
After my last trip, I thought there had to be a way I could recreate this feeling and productivity. There was! It’s called airplane mode. I wish it was as simple as turning it on.
I try to mimic the experience best I can. Instead of sitting on my sofa with my laptop, I’ll go to sit on the desk. I made sure to not have a desk chair that is too comfy. I’ll turn off the wifi to not give me any temptations and set the clock. The clock could be an hour or two depending on how much I need to get done.
I’ll have my kindle and laptop and even a physical book. I can’t say I can be productive for 12 hours straight like I can on a plane. But an hour or two that acting like I’m on a plane is often more productive than a full day otherwise. Like my brain tricks me into thinking I need to eat that cookie, I trick it into being productive.
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