I recently told someone who was saying they didn’t have time to observe their habits more closely that I now spend my days curious how I might save 12 seconds here and there. Easy timesavers are my jam. Searching for easy timesavers has become second nature to me — and that's because they allow me to have breathing room throughout the day.
I wanted to share my 6 easy timesavers with you here today, because they have helped me to be highly productive without suffering like I used to when I was procrastinating all the time.
6 Easy Timesavers for You to Try Today
- Perhaps the most important of the easy timesavers is the recommendation to let go of worry. Worry is the ultimate time-filler — I say it is like the styrofoam pieces that companies use to fill mailing boxes. If you have a spare moment, worry is going to find a way to enter in and spoil all of your peace and calm. But you can decide to prioritize your well-being and your time over the practice of having worry fill your extra time. This will not do away with problems, but it will do away with irrational predictions about the future or obsessively thinking about past mistakes. The other day I saw a Facebook post that said the only reality is the present — anything having to do with the past is memory and anything having to do with the future is imagination. I loved this post because it really is the truth. Think about it a bit and commit to a worry-free life.
2. Want to know a huge secret? You don’t have to pour all of your energy into every little thing. You can decide you’re going to fold the laundry while being totally chilled out instead of concentrating and solving problems. You can let certain tasks be LIGHT. We all get the message from schooling and growing up that things that are worthwhile and meaningful have to feel HARD, and I think that is one of the most harmful beliefs we can carry within us.
3. Quit faster. I think a lot of procrastination has to do with prolonging the creation process. We get stuck in obsessive cycles of worry about what is the professor going to think, when will I come up with the plot twist, and how much time do I have left, and then we end up depriving ourselves of real rest, real breaks, and the actual ability to decide that is enough for today. Your life was not meant to be subsumed under your work. Your work should serve and support you and ideally lift you up energetically. So, the next time you feel you don’t have what it takes, quit quickly, but always have an iron-clad plan for resuming as soon as is reasonable, with a new more empowered mindset for getting it done. We are not machines. So we shouldn’t act like them all the time.
4. Admit your mistakes A.S.A.P. Over the years I have learned to not get embarrassed by my mistakes. This was a huge hurdle for me to get over. Huge because 1) I don’t like making mistakes, and 2) I really don’t like admitting that I’ve made them. But the value of knowing that my heart and mind are clear throughout the day is way more important than me keeping my pride. I will take CALM and CLEAR over PRIDE any day. So I let people know if I am missing something, or if my photos in an email were sent incorrectly, or anything like that…big or small. Because I know that if I keep things under wraps because I feel embarrassed or ashamed, I just cause myself future trouble because now I have even more labor to get through — the actual work, and my mistake, and the fact that it remains a secret!
5. Write things down. Let the pen do the heavy lifting instead of your brain. I learned this trick from David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. If you are keeping track of everything in your brain, you are slowing your brain down by having it be your to-do list keeper. Have a written (or digital) to-do list of some kind and refer to it often and keep it moving — things coming in and things going off it consistently. This is such a great productivity trick, don’t skip this one!
6. Shrink it down. If you find yourself caught in overwhelm, chances are you’re looking at too much of the big picture, and you are frightening yourself and making it impossible to move forward even a little bit. That’s where you can shrink your view of the task and carve out just a small piece to start approaching. It will all be okay, but not if you never move!
What are some of your easy timesavers? I'd love to hear all about them. If you're looking for more support with your productivity and time management, take a look at my resources listed here: https://procrastinationcoach.com/start.
Photo: Michelle Adams Modern Photography
