Tag: time management

15 Simple Life Hacks That Can Change Your Life

It has been some time since I last wrote about handy ways of making life easier. I’m all about sharing good ideas and love reading other people’s ideas for becoming more efficient at work and home. This article is all about simple life hacks that I use all the time and can fully recommend.

1) Fix food stains with washing up liquid

I spilled some salad juice (technical term) over my work shirt the other week and was told to quickly rub it with washing up liquid. It was fairly oily but I did as I was told. Later when I popped it into the washing machine, it came out sparkling clean.

I am not saying this will always work, but it did happen again after a visit to my favourite Italian restaurant. Once again the stain vanished.

2) Fill the washing machine immediately

This one sounds obvious but why leave washing in different places or pile it up or pack it into a basket? You can just save time and energy and pop your dirty clothes straight into the washing machine. As soon as it gets full, switch it on. Job done.

3) Utilise banking app rewards

My banking apps are always offering tempting rewards. One deals with mainstream shops and offers cash back if you use your bank card to buy from them. The only thing you have to remember is to activate the rewards. That way, the next time you use that shop, it will count. A few weeks later you will receive cash back into your account.

Just make sure you take up the offers and use them within the allotted time frame.

4) Never ignore a coupon

I often get little letters from Co-Op or Tesco superstores telling me about my points balances. Often I open these hurriedly and then recycle the paper but recently I have been scooping up the coupons and realised they are actually made to suit my shopping habits (Who knew!?)

How silly was I to ignore these tailored coupons. Since then I have started using the apps and finding electronic versions of coupons. These clever supermarkets know I buy cartons of orange juice, for example. As a reward, they offer me vouchers for 20p off etc. Until recently I’d been missing a trick for soooo long!

5) Watch whole TV series FREE

Recently a show that I wanted to see became available on Paramount Plus but I didn’t have a subscription. I decided to do a seven day trial and watch all six episodes episodes of ‘The Flatshare’ and then cancel the membership before it started to charge.

6) Spread the alarms

When you set those annoying alarms to go off in the morning, spread them out. I tend to have my phone one side of the bed. This goes off first. Then a few minutes later the iPad will chime. Because it is further away I have to get out of actual bed to turn it off.

Whatever type of alarm you have, be it clock or a device, make sure you put them beyond arm’s reach.

7) Read chapters at work

If you are bookish like me, you’ll want to squeeze in as much reading as possible. One of the ways I do this is by using the kindle app on my phone.

At work, once I have eaten my lunch. I read a few pages of a novel. If I get any other time to fill, I open up a chapter and go for it.

8) Make To-Do lists work

I used to mock friends who kept endless to-do lists but lately I have been converted. My to-do lists tend to be on post-it notes stuck to my laptop. Or lists made on the ‘notes’ app on my iPhone. They have changed my life and I rarely forget to do stuff. Now I have fewer conversations involving, “I’m really sorry but I forgot all about it.”

9) Never waste a trip upstairs

At home, when you go upstairs for whatever reason, make it worthwhile. If you are making that trip to the loo, take some ironed clothes with you and put them away. On the way down, collect any rubbish and bring it with you. Tidy up as you go along and no journey will be wasted.

10) Have some battery lamps ready

My mum bought me two little battery powered lamps in summer. They were very cute and had holders so they looked more like lanterns.

She said they were in case I ever had a power cut. I reassured her that we never have them where I live. Not in twenty years at least. Weirdly, a few months later, the electricity went off and they came in really useful.

Pop a band round it.

11) Limit soap dispensers

I had this problem where too much soap would come out of a handwash dispenser. It ended up spilling too much down the bottle and onto the surface.

I discovered that if you wrap a rubber band around the neck it lets less soap out. Instead of squeezing a cupful out each time, it only allows a few drops. Perfect!

12) Always have the bare essentials with you.

Have a routine where you make sure you check your pockets for keys and whatever else you always need.

For me, I always want my keys and wallet, phone and hand santiser with me. I keep the keys in my right pocket and my phone in the left. My coat then houses my sanitiser (since Covid I can never be without it) and my back pocket holds my wallet.

13) Keep things in the same places

I grew up with a step-dad who was forever losing his keys. In fact, he never put anything in the same place more than once, so we were forever on wallet hunts or searching for letters or random items.

When I got home from school and wanted my fave TV show on, I could never find the remote. This drove me crazy! Especially in those days when TV shows were not available on streaming. You had to watch them live or spend ages setting up a VCR to record them.

I soon developed a strategy of my own and it’s simple. All I do is put things in the same place every time. As a result, I can rely on the remote being on the coffee table and my keys hanging in a certain place in the hallway. Phew!

14) Use a spoon to keep bubbly fresh

Put a teaspoon upside down into an open bottle of sparkling wine before placing in the fridge. I thought this was nonsense at first but so far it has worked rather well. I do like a glass of bubbly but never a whole bottle. Allowing it to stay fresh is a MUST!

15) This last one is for lazy gardeners (like me).

One thing I have learned since having my garden redone is that weeds will always claw back any empty soil. My good intentions are not enough to keep these horrible weeds at bay.

One solution I have found is to buy alpine plants such as dianthus and creeping thyme. They seem to get established easily and thrive throughout all of the seasons. Best of all they keep the weeds out of the way and don’t need replacing after flowering.

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Final Thoughts

These may seem like basic things but they are life hacks that I use regularly and am grateful for. Perhaps you have some top tips of your own that you could drop in the comments and share. Also, if you are interested, take a look at How to be more productive on my blog.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog. Please follow me if you want more similar articles in future. See you next time…

How To Be More Productive

One of the things that I have become good at over time is being efficient with my work time. In all of my jobs I have always been slightly against the clock and it has made me very aware of how quickly time flies and keen to use it wisely. In this day and age, there are so many distractions in life, and especially at work, but it makes a lot of sense to use work time well in order to make time for the fun stuff.

In this blog article I am going to explore exactly how you can make much better use of your time by being a bit more organised. If you are anything like me, you will want those dreary jobs out of the way as soon as possible in order to have some more relaxing time and space. I intend to suggest some productivity hacks to make it easier to achieve this.

Keep an eye on the time and keep moving forward with the tasks you are given.

Where does the time go?

Lately, I have been observing other people working and noticing a few things that slow them down. Whether it is working from home or being swept up in a busy workplace, distractions are everywhere and frequently make simple tasks take a lot longer than they should.

Here are a few things that slow productivity at work:

1) When getting into a specific task, noticing a new email pop up and then indulging in opening it and getting sucked into its content. This results in a period of time being used away from the main task and leads to different tangents that reduce overall efficiency. Productivity levels fall when this kind of thing happens at work.

2) Walking to perform a task and getting sidetracked by a colleague on the way, by stopping for a chat. This is one of those everyday things that causes productivity and time management to diminish.

3) Taking a personal phone call while at work.

4) Deflecting a task, in preference for an easier job. This makes the less popular task drag on and can complicate things if it delays other processes or people end up chasing you for it to be done. Sometimes deflected jobs also get forgotten, causing all sorts of complications later on.

5) Not planning your day properly OR not sticking to your plan.

I could go on and on but will stop there. I am sure that you can think of many other ways in which work tasks can also be delayed or skipped due to distractions. Feel free to mention other examples in the comments below this post.

So, what can we do to keep up our productivity at work? How will we make simple adjustments that improve our efficiency and get things done quicker?

Here are my suggestions for being more productive:

Try and keep to the agenda. Don’t allow off-task conversations to take over your online meetings.

1) Have a simple plan to follow throughout the day. Include some periods of catch-up. If you work from home, pencil in a ‘fake’ meeting to your online timetable, to prevent people from disturbing you for an hour, allowing you to get everything in order.

2) Turn your personal phone off until a dedicated break time. One of my friends was saying that she was alarmed by a news update at work and it stressed her out. When I asked how she knew, she said it had popped up on the phone and she was tempted to read it and then got distracted by it. Turning it off will stop notifications, others calling you and text messages lurking on the screen that may demand your attention.

3) As much as possible, have everything that you need with you so you are ready to go and don’t need to spend part of your day retrieving or searching for things. Nothing is more frustrating and time consuming that being ready to do a task and finding that you are unprepared due to missing something that you need.

4) If someone tries to sidetrack you with a conversation as you make your way to and from the photocopier, ask them to join you and hold that chat next to the copier. Or simply, politely inform them that you are very busy and would love to catch up at lunchtime. Remember – quite simply, some people spend their day trying to get out of being productive. Don’t be one of them.

5) When holding a meeting, be it face-to-face or online, remind everyone politely that there is an agenda and simply stick to it. Recently I overheard a zoom meeting where the first person speaking had a new cat and everyone cooed over it for the next ten minutes or so, delaying the start of the actual meeting.

I love a good chat! However, meetings can drag on and run over if you allow chitchat and off-task discussions. I know that I sound harsh but keeping the pace is important, especially when maintaining a productive mindset. I do wonder how many millions of hours of online meetings are wasted with general gossip and chat which is nothing to do with the meeting focus.

Summary

I hope that you have found these simple observations and suggestions useful. I know it can seem insensitive to keep the pace going when you are at work and others want a chat, but I have learned that doing so means getting tasks completed on time. This then leaves plenty of free time after work to socialise and means not having to work late to catch up on errands.

Thank you for taking the time to read my productivity hacks blog post today. Please check Boost Your Income – Side Hustle Suggestions for ideas of how to make extra income in the time you will have saved by being more efficient. Please also consider following my blog for similar future content.

Working From Home – Ideas

Over time I have experienced lots of different work patterns. In the past I have worked full time office hours, flexible hours, several jobs at once and night shifts. But Covid has introduced working from home as an acceptable part of a normal working pattern. Although I teach face-to-face part time, I still manage to have some time at home doing my other work, such as freelance writing.

Lots of my friends include managers and researchers and they have really got used to working from home. So much so that they have opted to carry it on in preference to returning to the office.

Personally, I hope to work at least two full days from home after the summer and I am really looking forward to it. I have gathered together some advice for people who are new to this kind of work and listed them below:

Working at home – Suggestions

– All of my friends agree that getting rid of distractions is vital when setting up a home based office. Here is a previous article about this, Working from home – without distraction. Such distractions include family members, pets and neighbours popping round for tea.

– Having the right equipment matters. That includes back supports for any chairs you sit on. Also it is vital that you get an anti-blue light screen protector that minimises glare, helping you to look after your eyes. This will also stop them getting tired so quickly.

– Make time for physical breaks. Not travelling to work is great for the environment but often it is easy to become quite sedentary. Time can also run away from you so make sure you rigidly set times for breaks and chances to be mobile.

Some easy ways to mobilise include:

a) Take the dog for a quick walk (he/she will thank you for it).

b) Do ten squats. These are great for getting the blood flowing and wake up your glutes as well as keeping you alert.

c) Walk up and down the stairs twice. Perhaps even treat yourself with a glass of water at the end of it.

d) Do a home maintenance task for five minutes. This helps in two ways as it gives your back and eyes a rest as well as contributing to those chores that will otherwise build up throughout the day. Good examples are: fill the dishwasher, take the bins out, dust the window sills or wipe the kitchen surfaces.

e) Close your eyes and lay on your back, doing alternate leg raises. This will give your abdomen a simple workout whilst allowing you to let your eyes relax for a few minutes. Three lots of ten leg raises work wonders.

– Make sure that if you have a visible timetable online, you pencil out a block everyday for admin tasks. If you don’t then colleagues won’t resist booking you in for back-to-back meetings all day long.

If you manage your time well and don’t get sucked into too many unnecessary meetings, you will still have time for exercise and reflection at the end of the day. Without the need to commute, you should have a little bit of ME-time to unwind, get fresh air and maybe even read a book.

Hopefully this advice was quite useful. For similar posts about lifestyle and entertainment, perhaps consider following my little blog.