5 Efficiency Hacks You'll Never Find in a Business Magazine

When we think about productivity, our minds go directly to the details and depths of our work. We think about apps that save us slivers of time here and there, tips and tricks and more efficient processes. There’s only so much time and energy in the day, and the work day is pretty full as it is. Even if we cut out coffee breaks, bathroom breaks and talking to people, there’s still only so much time, and energy, yet so much still to do.

The thing to remember is that we aren’t robots. As human beings, our needs aren’t so simple. When we have tough calls to make, we delay. We find something else to work on, our minds drift to more positive topics or we work on lower priority items to work up the nerve. We aren’t machines. Even with the perfect apps and flawless business processes, we’re forgetting about the other half of the work – life equation, the life part.

A simple google search will tell you the clear stats for yourself. Your household requires an average of 20 hours a week to run. Let's pause here. That's 20 hours of unpaid, unglamorous, unappreciated work. You'd never accept that in a job offer, yet we all do it as part of our lives. That’s laundry, cooking, cleaning, dishes, household maintenance and all the things that crop up to keep the home running and this doesn’t take into account family time, or the time it takes to pull kids toys out of the toilet, or scrub marker off the wall.

You may think we’ve gotten off topic. When we think of business efficiency why would we think about the dishes? If you’re looking for more time in the day, it’s time to cross boundaries, from work into your life as a whole. When you compartmentalize, you miss the bigger picture. Your energy and time, all come from you the same source. You.

If you come home to a house that is clean and tidy, you might have time and energy to take on that Masters you always wanted to achieve, or get in the workout we all put off, or spend time playing with and enjoying our children.

To me, housework is the silent scourge that steals the last of our energy, after a long day. After we've prepared a meal and eaten with those we love, dishes. After we've worn our pressed clothes to a hard day at the office, laundry. After we've spent the day playing with and chasing around the kids, cleaning. Housework is the final insult to injury after a long day. The silent but constant demands of living our lives, steals our time and energy from both our work and those we love. Doing laundry isn’t a value added activity. You don’t learn anything from it, and it’s not enough physical work to at least be called exercise, neither is doing the dishes.

Business teaches us, especially manufacturing, that extra steps and material handling in our processes is wasteful. Lean consultants will tell you that less is more. Fewer steps to complete a task is faster, more efficient and more profitable. Why not start that at home too?

1.     Minimalism.

If you want to see your morning routine go faster, or to spend less time cleaning in the evenings, have less stuff. Yes, it is that simple. More things, means more things to clean, maintain, or clean around. If you have any experience in logistics you’ll know that, material handling is a real thing. If you’ve ever paid a cleaner to clean your house, you’ll know that if your place is tidy, yet needs a wipe down, that’s a lot less time than if your home is littered with items and there’s no organizational pattern in sight. Now, even if you’re fine living in lots of clutter, any time you spend looking for things, like your keys, is time lost due to inefficiency. If you’ve ever bought replacement items for something you found later, that’s inefficiency. Time spent looking for something, and then compounded with time and money to replace it, can create so much lost time and expend so much energy and attention, that shaving a few minutes here and there with fancy apps, will never replace.

There are different degrees of minimalism, so pick what’s right for you, but no matter what your balance of stuff versus space, ditching things that only create clutter and use up valuable real estate is a great way to save time in your day.

2.     Make the machines do the work

We’re lucky enough to live in an era of automation. We have machines for everything. Washing our clothes, doing the dishes, and those robot vacuum cleaners get better ever year. Now we’re entering a new era, our internet-powered overlords are vying for us to put their virtual AI assistants to work. Alexa, Siri, Cortana, what nice names for invisible machines who want to help us do, anything they can, and their capacity grows by the day. My thought here is simple. Use the machines as much as you can.

A rhythm that I use personally now, is to have all the machines possible, working for me when I leave the house or when I go to bed. Knowing that I will come home to clean dishes in the dishwasher and a washing machine set to finish as I come in the door, ready to be changed over when I get home is satisfying and makes sure things don't pile up. When I wake up, the coffee maker is running and it’s one less thing to worry about when I’m groggy, is like having my very own robot maid. While life inches ever closer to being like the Jetsons, it’s not only a time saver to automate as much housework as possible, it’s a small part of a bigger trend. Keeping up with technology is important not only in the home, but at work too. If you’re willing to learn how to program your smart TV, you might be willing to master a new program at work. It’s only going to get more challenging to keep up with all the changes and technology that come our way, and if you’re willing to step up, you’ll be earning yourself a really good argument for asking for a raise or getting the next promotion. Being a super-user of technology has never hurt a career that I’ve heard of. Of course not all challenges can be solved by technology, and not all work can be done by machines, but, the more proficient you are with software and the features of the helpful robots that already live in your home, the more time you’ll have to do with as you please.

3.     Delegation

You wouldn’t try to run a company without the help of a team and maybe a few contractors, so why do we feel like the house needs to be run by only its occupants? Everyone is different of course. You might feel comfortable doing your own plumbing, but you’d call an electrician without blinking. Maybe you clean your own gutters and windows, but you wouldn’t dream of re-shingling your own roof. Where is that line for you? What is your balance of delegation versus DIY? Even if you’re extremely handy, you likely don’t have time to do it all.

Businesses have strategies for manpower planning and outsourcing, why not do the same for your home? Some people reach for the phone every time something needs cleaning or fixing, which is fantastic if you have the funds and the right people helping you, for the rest of us, some strategy is required.

The simple way to work out this balance for yourself is to make 2 lists. Which household activities you can do and which ones you can’t. If you don’t have an electrician’s ticket, leave that to the professionals and add it to the "can't" list. Now, you'll want to asterisk the items that are occasional, and highlight the weekly and daily activities, and focus on the highlighted items. Next to each list, write the hourly cost you think you might pay for a contractor to do the work, and how much time that might take. Now, figure out how much YOUR time is worth to you. You can use the rate you charge at work, or, you can put a premium on your free time, it’s up to you. Finally, put a star next to the jobs you dislike, and a check mark beside the things you would still like to do personally. Anything that has a star, and a dollar figure lower than the one you’ve given yourself, needs to be delegated immediately. If you could pay someone else to do jobs you dislike, and aren't worth your time, you have a clear case to get it off your plate. Your time is too valuable, and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish at work when you’re no longer worrying about who’s making dinner that night, or if your dry-cleaning needs picking up.

There are services out there that are more affordable than you think. You might find someone in your neighborhood who’s responsible, but between jobs, or looking to gain cash on the side when retirement pensions aren’t quite enough. While home-cooked meals might be a burden to those with high powered careers, a grateful family to cook for might be just the thing someone like a grandmother who lives on her own on a fixed income might appreciate. This kind of job is more about finding someone who would appreciate helping you out, and you'd enjoy spending time with.

Delegation doesn’t have to mean hiring expensive contractors at every turn. Instead, finding win-wins is a classic, that businesses have been employing for ages. You might be surprised at how little the cost might be to have so much help.

4.     Task stacking

Like listening to an audio book while commuting or going for a run, there are so many ways to kill two or more birds with one stone. If you can find ways to be productive while travelling, then that time is less wasted and now an opportunity. Saving your writing for the time you spend on the plane, is one way to look at it, but there’s a larger picture and longer-term way to do this as well. Task-stacking can be achieved even more thoroughly with long term planning. If you know that you need to complete a project for a client, but it can also serve as a project to profile on your website, you’ve now created more than one use for that same piece of work. Social media experts do this all the time. They write blogs that can then be split up into multiple posts, updates and even talked about in live feeds. They use those blogs to create larger long form content and use that work to gain more customers and clients. Making sure every effort serves at least one function is incredibly efficient, and you can do the same in your home as well. If you enjoy reading time, try to read things that advance your career, that you still find enjoyable. If you’d like to relax and watch a show, try to find something relevant to your long-term goals and dreams. If you want to get more exercise and spend time with friends, plan some social outings that accomplish both goals. There are ways your time at home can serve your career and your future, without becoming a workaholic or neglecting your need for relaxation and downtime too.

5.     Preventative maintenance and long-term planning

When you think about all the things you need to do in a day, a week, a month, a year, a life-time… it gets overwhelming in a hurry. So, we instead get caught up in the minutia of the day to day, allowing minor mishaps and issues to run our lives and take us off track continuously. It happens at work, and it happens in the home. When you come into the office to dozens of emails, where a client is angry or an employee made a mistake, it quickly steals our time and focus, and the home is no different. If you want to make sure you have time to deal with unforseeables, there’s an answer in business for that too.

Large companies have large assets to run and maintain. Oil and gas is a prime example. They have multi-billion dollar facilities that have expensive components that need to be maintained. If they allowed themselves to be surprised by breakdowns every time a part got old or worn, they’d lose millions and millions of dollars, and potentially even lives. When in a dangerous environment like that, they have detailed maintenance schedules and are always checking to make sure everything is in running order. They know, that surprises are not only expensive, but dangerous and notorious attention-stealers. Operational excellence in oil and gas means that they have categorized their assets in terms of being critical assets or non-critical assets. To over simplify, the first category gets preventative maintenance, and the second is usually run to fail.

In the home and in your life, hopefully you get your oil changed in your car regularly and the fluids checked. A few dollars and a little time to do that check up means that you’ll avoid costly failures that can leave you stranded by the roadside in winter. With your home, checking your attic during spring cleaning for wet spots might just save you a bundle, by getting a leak patched before your whole roof needs repair and a puddle forms in your living room. Changing filters in your dishwasher, washing machine and your furnace are more examples of simple acts that can save you time, money and a potentially expensive and exhausting disaster, just ask anyone whose furnace has given out in the dead of winter.

Lastly, preventative maintenance is never more important when it comes to your health. If you really want to be more productive at work, don’t get sick. Illness comes in many forms, it could be a perpetual sniffle you just can't shake, or it can be much worse. The extra pounds we carry when there’s just no time left to exercise, might get you a project completed now, but what will that cost you down the road? We are only human, and we require a lot of maintenance. A dentist appointment now will save you a root canal later, a jog around the block might save you a heart attack later. While you can’t prevent every illness, or accident, you can take steps to eliminate the ones waiting to happen.

If you’re thinking about ways to maximize your productivity, making make sure that every moment counts so that you can have your best career, reach your goals and succeed beyond your wildest dreams, don’t forget that it all begins with you. You, a person, who was born into a family, who likely has one now too. You’re a person who has a whole life that doesn’t just revolve around the work you do and paying attention to that doesn’t take away time from your accomplishments, but rather can support them. Find win-wins in your life and let people into your personal space who can help you. Think about your long-term goals and begin taking little steps towards it that also serve your needs today.

Take good care of yourself and the people you love and you’re already a wild success.

Coming Soon!

The 3-part Household CEO series!

Part 1 - Household CEO book, Leading the Ones You Love.

Part 2 - The Household CEO, playbook, a book full of introspective and family bonding activities to help you all discover your family mission.

Part 3 - The Household CEO, Mindsetting Mandalas, a coloring book designed for self reflection and family discussion.

It is my joy and passion to help others in their journeys to bring their families and extended families together to share in a mission in life. It is my experience that the only way to open up these conversations, is through fun together. Everything I share is light-hearted and joyful, but leading towards the deep and meaningful. That's why it wasn't even to write a book. There needed to be fun and games, and interactive art work to ensure that this doesn't become a book on the shelf, but something that the whole family can share and enjoy, slowly growing stronger and stronger, without feeling forced.

I believe that success at work begins at home, and creating a strong home base, full of light, love and a united mission builds a truly beautiful future for everyone in the family and everyone that family touches.

Love to you and yours,

Laura Vero-Augustine

#familybusiness #productivity #household #ceo