7 Simple Weekly Habits That Saved Me 1000’s of Hours
I like to plan. Almost to a fault.
But I know that spending all day planning is not sustainable.
So I’ve built 7 weekly habits that enable me to take action without sacrificing too much planning.
These habits took me 5+ years to build. You can learn them in 5 minutes.
1. Recurring planning
The average person sleeps 7 hours a night and works 9–5 during weekdays. After work and sleep you’re left with 47% of the week for everything else.
There are repetitive tasks that you do every week that take up this time. Like buying groceries, cooking dinners, and working during the day.
And if it’s recurring, it can be simplified. How’s that? First, you need to figure out where you are losing time. For example:
- I spend 1-hour preparing dinner each night
- I can’t decide how I want to spend my time and switch between tasks for 30 minutes
- I’m groggy in the morning and don’t know what to wear so I take 20 min to get ready
Once you identify a few common culprits you can move to the second step. Removing decision fatigue.
Each day you make 35,000 decisions and each decision costs a little energy. What if you could remove some decisions altogether?
Here’s how I use a weekly planning session on Sunday morning to remove decision fatigue and save energy:
- I plan my meals for the week to simplify cooking and save time
- I set my priorities for the week and use those to guide my daily to-do lists
- I schedule my week with my partner so that we’re not scrambling to plan last minute
2. Realistic to-do lists
Gone are the days of never-ending to-do lists. No more!
With a long list of tasks for the day ahead, it feels impossible to win. You become unmotivated because there’s too much to do.
Instead with 2 or 3 key things that you want to do for the day, it’s easy to get started and feel like you’ve won that day. Every day.
You can use the Pareto principle to pick your critical to-do’s. The principle states; 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. Not bad, huh?
With shorter, intentional to-do lists, I’ve found that I do less work but have a larger impact.
3. Thinking Time
At first “thinking time” feels backwards. You’re taking time away from your work to think? Think about what? When you feel overwhelmed the last thing you may want to do is think.
A mentor of mine helped me reframe “thinking time”. They asked me:
“If you were on an airplane that lost power, what would you rather that the pilots do? Would you want them to frantically mash each button in hopes that it restores power? Or would you rather that they pause to remember their training before they take action?”
Your mind takes time to process information — when you give it time to rest your brain gets to work. It stores critical information, mulls over your problems, and prepares for action.
4. The 5-Minute Rule
The 5-minute rule is simple. When faced with a task you can ask yourself “Can I get this done in 5 minutes?” If the answer is yes, do it.
This works wonders for routine tasks like taking out the garbage, giving the apartment a vacuum, or cleaning up after dinner.
And once you get started you may finish a few other small tasks while you are already up.
The 5-minute rule helps me keep my apartment clean which helps me keep a clear mind. Less clutter means less stress so that I can focus on the bigger “20%” tasks.
5. Habit Stacking (from Atomic Habits)
Your brain builds a network of neurons to support your behaviors. The more you practice a skill, the larger the neuron network grows, and the more efficient you become at that skill. Pretty neat!
You have core habits that you take advantage of every day. You find it effortless to make a cup of coffee in the morning or to brush your teeth before bed… along with hundreds of other habits. You can leverage these habits to build new ones.
How?
After you complete a daily habit you can stack a new habit on top. It looks like this:
- After I have a glass of water in the morning, I will meditate for one minute
- After I log off work, I will drive to the gym for a workout
- After I get in bed, I will give my partner a kiss
The reason why this works so well is that your current habits are imprinted in your brain. You are more likely to succeed if you link new habits to your existing strong neural networks.
6. Pairing work and pleasure
You can combine activities with delayed gratification with activities with instant gratification to make it easier to do the hard work. A few examples:
- You can put on your favorite podcast while you exercise
- You can watch your favorite TV show while you clean the kitchen
- You can take a difficult meeting in your favorite coffee shop
It’s a simple concept — and it works wonders.
Over time, the pain associated with delayed gratification will decrease and you will no longer need to pair these tasks. You’ll find it easier to beat procrastination and make wiser decisions. All by pairing work and pleasure.
7. Exercise
Exercise? How does that save thousands of hours? It seems counterintuitive that a few hours a week saves time.
You’ve heard of the standard benefits of exercising:
- Better sleep
- Improved mood
- Reduced anxiety
- Better brain function
- Lower odds of chronic disease
But it turns out that there’s one more benefit that people haven’t heard of…
A Harvard Study found that 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise reduces your risk of early death by 21%. So a few hours per week can save you several years of your life.
If you take away one thing from this article let it be this: think long-term. These 7 weekly habits help me reduce stress and focus on my health as I work toward long-term success.
Every week, I break down timeless insights to help you become a better leader. Actionable ideas, systems, and frameworks that will save you hundreds of hours. Follow me on Medium for more.
