Automate Everything: How to Save 10 Hours Each Week

Tim Ferriss has talked about how to cut hours from our busy schedules in The Four Hour Work Week, and I took some helpful suggestions to heart after listening to the audio book. However, I’m sure many people, like me, were still left thinking “I don’t know that I could apply this to my job/life.”

Having said that, I think I’ve found a number of ways to apply the advice, put my own spin on it, and cut out a few tedious hours from each week.

If you don’t teach online college courses, this might not feel relevant to your situation, but who knows- it might just spark some similar ideas for efficiency in your particular field or life in general.

Here’s where I’m at:

I’ve reached the point in my online teaching career that I’ve started having regular conversations with a colleague of mine who lives in New York, has two kids, and has been teaching at multiple universities online for much longer than I have (something I rarely find), so her advice about balancing work and life is invaluable to me.

I’ve discovered a major theme in our phone calls lately, which is simple but also life-altering, and similar to the theme of The Four Hour Work Week and other helpful life hack-related articles I’ve read:

Automate everything.

When I sat back and thought about everything I’ve learned about organization, consistency, and teaching efficiently from my colleague and other like-minded people, I realized that the real gems that are helping me at this point are about automation (or as close to it as you can get as a freelance employee of sorts).

These are 4 new changes I’ve made to make my personal life and work life not only more efficient, but also much less stressful and more satisfying:

• Set up weekly announcements to be sent automatically to each class at each school months ahead of time. My friend turned me onto this idea, and at first I was afraid there would be some massive mistakes and incorrect deadlines in these pre-planned announcements. However, it’s been two months since I stopped sending bi-weekly announcements, and I have to admit, having one less thing to take care of (in online classes at 3 schools) on Mondays and Wednesdays is so much nicer (and much more of a timesaver) than I thought it would be.

• Have a separate planner to keep school deadlines and grading tasks straight. I used to rely on a random list of ‘to dos’ for each school that I updated daily (yes, daily- a huge waste of time) based on what I saw was up next in each class’s course schedule. However, after taking the same colleague’s advice, I created a planner that worked well for me (I actually made my own- if that gives you any indication of how obsessively organized I am), and pre-scheduled (a few weeks before the semester started) every day that I would have to grade certain assignments. My brain is so grateful for not having to strain to remember what was on the course schedule for that one school in that one tab that I just closed on my computer. Again, I was very doubtful (I normally have an aversion to calendars and planners), but it has been really nice to have ‘past me’ organize this entire semester’s ‘‘to dos.’

• Plan meals ahead of time. I have tiny tubs of peanut butter, chicken salad and cracker ‘snack kits,’ and bags of almonds ready for when I need to run out the door (and they’re usually already packed away in my ‘teacher bag’ when I’m in the classroom all day). I also have dinners and lunches set up for my husband at the beginning of the week (all from Trader Joe’s, which eliminates most of the dedication, cooking, cost, and concern about health content on my part- thank you, Trader Joe’s!).

• Automate your social life as much as possible. My husband and I have a few different groups of friends, and we also enjoy spending as much time as possible with family members who live nearby. For a while, it was time consuming just figuring out how to coordinate plans with everyone. To cut down on having to come up with creative activities to fill our usual 3-day weekends and see numerous people, we’ve established a few different ‘go-to’ activities on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays; it includes movies in the park with friends, Saturday and Sunday farmer’s markets (all scheduled by our city), family dinners on Sunday night, and an always ready guest room for dear friends and family who want to hang out for the night.

You may look at this list and consider the concept of ‘automating everything’ ridiculous; it is kind of crazy that we’ve become so busy as a society that we have to be hyper-organized to keep up with the demands of life. However, I see this as a chance to eliminate much of the busy work we deal with, and save hours of our lives to more fully enjoy being present, living at a slower pace, and appreciating the simple things in life.

Happy living :).