6 Life Hacks for Efficiency Enthusiasts
My friends have always been intrigued by my ability to fit many things into my life. I have always been the one working hard, organizing outings, exercising diligently, getting into new hobbies every few months, and reading a new book every 2 weeks. I used to joke and paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger with his “I just sleep faster”, but the reality is that I don’t. I need to sleep 7–8 hours a day to be at my peak performance. My knack for efficiency and the habits I’ve developed over time have enabled me to accomplish all of this, and I believe these habits could be beneficial for others as well.
Ultimately, we all want to do more, learn more, be in more places, talk to more people. However, simply having a goal won’t make us fitter, wiser, or create more time for us; we need a system that drives us towards those goals, as author James Clear suggests in his book Atomic Habits. In this article, I’ll discuss my own system and share how I optimize my time in my personal life. In the future I’ll delve into my efficiency hacks at work.
I will divide this article into 2 main sections: maximizing your available time and optimizing your time. The techniques I’ll introduce below may be familiar to you, but their true value lies in their consistent application, which can be challenging. In this article, I’ll not only explain why these techniques are useful but also provide practical guidance on how to integrate them into your daily routine. By sharing my personal experiences and insights, I aim to help you enhance your productivity and make the most of your time.
Section 1: Maximize Your Time
The day consists of 24 hours, and we spend approximately a third of it sleeping. After accounting for essential activities such as eating and personal hygiene, we are left with roughly 12 to 14 hours. Deducting a minimum of 8 hours for work and at least another hour for commuting, our available free time is reduced to 3–5 hours. This may not seem like much, but if we use our time efficiently, we can accomplish a great deal within this window. In this section, we will explore three techniques to help you extend and make the most of your “free time slot”.
Technique 1: Give Up On TV Shows and Films
On average, Europeans and Americans spend more than 200 minutes per day consuming entertainment via a screen. Even if you are on the lowest percentiles, it is easy to unlock 1 hour of time of your day if you stop consuming entertainment via your phone, tablet or TV (1 waking hour saved every day is equivalent to 23 more days every year!).
Since I was as hooked to TV shows and films as the next person, I know what you’re thinking. Many consume entertainment as a mechanism to unwind and would struggle to replace it by other activities such as reading or learning, since they struggle to find the mental bandwidth required to do so. That is exactly what happened to me, and what I discovered is that you can form any habit, no matter how hard it might result initially. My recommendation is that you start reading content that is easy for you, and once you have read a few books that really got you hooked, you will start finding it easier to transition progressively to other types of content (such as some of the topics you want to learn about).
The transition became easier for me once I began to grasp the vastness of the knowledge I wanted to acquire and realized that the entertainment industry’s primary goal is to maximize the time we spend in front of screens. As a result, I understood that, aside from documentaries, I was essentially putting my brain on standby. Albert Einstein once said, “when you stop learning you start dying.” Personally, if I have spare time at the end of my day, I’d rather be learning than dying.
Technique 2: Avoid Social Media
Most social media platforms have ads as their main revenue stream. Since you wouldn’t be using social media if it only showed you ads, these platforms try to engage you for as long as possible and show you the right balance between relevant content and ads so you continue scrolling (and eventually clicking on an ad). Nir Eyal describes in his book Hooked how infinite scrolling uses variable rewards to keep users engaged. Nir argues that if you, as a user, knew exactly what would be the next item in your wall, you wouldn’t probably continue scrolling.
In fact, this technique is pretty effective since as of 2022, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 147 minutes per day, up from 145 minutes in the previous year.
However, this time is not always beneficial for users. Research shows that the more time people spend on Facebook and Instagram, the more they compare themselves socially. This social comparison is linked, among other things, to lower self-esteem and higher social anxiety. I personally believe that if you want to stay connected to people, talking to them in person or even calling them will be healthier for your relationship and your mental health than connecting on social media, even if at a much lower frequency.
With a world average of 2.5 hours per day (~40 full days per year), social media is an obvious place to start if you are looking for time efficiencies in your life. It is addictive and not great for your mental health, so surely there are better ways to spend your time. I personally abandoned all social networks but LinkedIn, since it is a great source of information and learning for topics of my interest. Having said that, I still find myself every now and then hooked on the infinite scroll…
Technique 3: Limit the Consumption of News
From Shane Parrish in Farnham Street, one of my favorite blogs::
Our obsession with being informed makes it hard to think long-term. We spend hours consuming news because we want to be informed. The problem is, the news doesn’t make us informed — quite the opposite. The more news we consume, the more misinformed we become.
News is, by definition, something that doesn’t last. It exists for only a moment before it changes. As news has become easier to distribute and cheaper to produce, the quality has decreased, and the quantity has increased, making it nearly impossible to find the signal in the noise.
News consumes your attention, and given the flood of information, unless you limit how much news you consume, you will be left with little attention span for other purposes. I personally stopped reading any local and national news and opted for 2 international newspapers that I check at least once weekly. I believe that macro trends are more relevant than local happenings, since they allow you to understand the bigger picture. I must admit I struggle in the water cooler conversations (a lot!) since I am never up to date with “the last thing”, but this frees up a few hours every week that I can invest in my personal goals.
Section 2: Optimize Your Time
In the initial section, we explored strategies for maximizing the available time in your day. In contrast, this section delves into optimizing the utilization of any time you’ve successfully carved out for yourself.
Technique 4: Stop All Your Notifications
We live in the attention economy, and we receive signals every few seconds to try and capture our attention. Apple has confirmed that users unlock their iPhones an average of 80 times per day. Every of these interruptions will consume your time in 2 different ways: (1) by getting you engaged with checking your email, social media, etc. and (2) by spending time regaining your focus. A research study at the University of California at Irvine found that, on average, it takes around 23 minutes for most workers to get back on task after an interruption. Be it working on a project, spending time with your family or talking to a friend, interruptions limit the quality of the task at hand. And most likely, the event which created the interruption in the first place did not require immediate attention (or any).
In my own experience, I realized how notifications had a severe impact on the quality of my work. By removing them, it took me less time and lower cognitive load to complete my tasks. This is why a few years ago I set my phone in night mode and never came back. I removed all notifications and badges. My lock screen always shows the picture of my daughter, not emails, WhatsApp messages, etc. Only if there is an incoming call my phone will vibrate (not even ring), since normally a call allows for the in-sync communication that email and messaging apps fall short of. Sounds too radical for you? Just try it for a week or 2.
Technique 5: Set Your Hourly Price
In The Almanack of Naval Ravikant the author by the same name argues that setting an aspirational hourly rate gives you a very powerful mechanism to make decisions about how to invest your time. Your aspirational hourly rate is how much you believe your time is worth (not necessarily how much you are being paid right now), so when you need to choose whether to do something yourself or to pay for it, you have an easy math to make the right choice.
Using your hourly rate will save you from spending time in activities for which you would be better off paying someone else to do. Here are three examples that illustrate how this approach can be applied to everyday situations:
- Cleaning: let’s say your aspirational hourly rate is 200€. If you need to clean your house, which would take you 4 hours to complete, you can calculate the opportunity cost of doing it yourself as 800€ (4 hours x 200€). Now, if you can hire a professional cleaning service to do the job for 100€, it makes more sense to pay for the service rather than doing it yourself, as you save 700€ in opportunity cost.
- Moving: You’re moving to a new apartment and need to pack and transport your belongings. It would take you 8 hours to complete the move, costing you 1600€ in opportunity cost (8 hours x 200€). If you can hire a moving company to handle the move for 1000€, you would save 600€ in opportunity cost.
- Plumbing: You have a leaky faucet that needs fixing, and it would take you 2 hours to diagnose and repair the issue, costing you 400€ in opportunity cost (2 hours x 200€). If you can hire a plumber to fix the leak for 75€, you would save 325€ in opportunity cost.
In all cases, using your aspirational hourly rate as a decision-making tool helps you prioritize your time and focus on tasks that are more aligned with your skills and goals, while outsourcing or delegating tasks that are less valuable or outside your area of expertise. This approach can lead to increased productivity, better use of your time, and ultimately, a higher overall return on your time investment.
Technique 6: Master Your Routine
A well-designed routine is the key to achieving your goals. By allocating time for important activities, you ensure that they become a part of your daily life. Remember, your priorities should be reflected in your schedule. As Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, wisely said, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”
For instance, let’s say exercise is a priority for you. You could establish a consistent morning routine, like working out right after waking up. The advantage of morning routines is that they’re less likely to be disrupted by unexpected events throughout the day.
Another example could be dedicating time for personal development, such as learning a new language or skill. You might set aside an hour each evening to focus on this goal. By consistently allocating time for this activity, you’ll make steady progress and eventually master the skill.
Ultimately, a well-structured routine helps you prioritize and achieve your goals. By intentionally designing your schedule, you take control of your life and make room for what truly matters to you.
Conclusion
The pursuit of efficiency is a continuous journey that requires dedication, discipline, and the willingness to adapt. By applying the techniques shared in this article, you can unlock the potential to achieve more in your personal life. Remember, the key to success lies in creating a system that drives you towards your goals. By implementing these life hacks and refining them to suit your unique needs, you can transform your daily routine and make significant strides towards a more efficient, fulfilling, and balanced life.
