5 more tips to optimize your time
Nine months ago, I wrote a couple of blog posts that were a bit different from what I usually write. In the meantime I have received good feedback on the posts and therefore decided to write this follow-up. So here it goes: 5 more tips to optimize your time.
- Cook for multiple days: When doing a dish, make sure to prepare enough food for two or even three days. Most food tastes just as good the second day.
- Cook for your freezer: My freezer is always filled with partial made ingredients like tomato sauce and meat balls. I make 3 liters of tomato sauce once in a while using this recipe (in Danish). I also make both boiled and fried meat balls using my favorite kitchen gadget, the Meat Baller.
- Freeze uneaten food: Always freeze leftovers (not the food you’ve already put on your plate but couldn’t eat, but the uneaten food from your pans and pots). Once in a while we eat stuff from the freezer for the entire week. Someone always wrinkle their nose when told this, but remember this is well-prepared and delicious food and not a machined pizza.
Work from home or work on your way to work
When I talk to some of my friends living in bigger cities or other countries I feel gifted. I “only” use about an hour to go to work every day. You may use more than that, but no matter if you’re using 30 minutes or 3 hours a day, you could probably use that time for something else other than transport. When working from home I save 1 hour of transport and because I usually eat my lunch at home while working in front of the computer, working from home gives me around 1½ hours extra each day. Sometimes this time ends up in my employer’s wallet, and sometimes I stop early and do personal stuff if I gain any hours.
Another approach is to use public transportation instead of driving to work yourself. Even though it’s not comfy to work with a laptop on the bus, it’s amazing what you can achieve during a 45 minutes bus ride.
Listen and even watch shows and movies on double speed
Automate repeating tasks
Before having children I never really thought too much about how I used my spare time and night after night quickly disappeared without any visible results. I didn’t see anything wrong in using time on manual tasks which could have been automated. Today I try automating as much as possible. I could probably automate even more, but this is what I’ve done so far:
Automatic backup: Once in a while I did a manual backup by copying files to an external hard drive. A lot of people use their NAS for backup, but having a dedicated and always-on server in the house always made a NAS redundant for me and my family. Backing up files is boring and you can easily forget to do it on a regular basis. I signed up for automated backup in the cloud at Mozy a couple of years ago and this year I changed to Backblaze which offers unlimited space. All I had to do was to install their client and the software automatically backs up my entire PC. Simple, easy, and time saving. Automatic picture synchronization: Another task that I would do on a regular basis was to copy files from my digital camera to my PC. We take a lot of pictures of the kids and therefore need to empty the memory card quite often. I bought an Eye-Fi SD Card two years ago and it has become one of the three loves of my life. The Eye-Fi card slips into any SD port (in this case my camera) and automatically syncs the pictures on the phone with my PC through Wi-Fi. That’s right! That small card contains not only 4GB of space but also a Wi-Fi chip. When I get near my wireless network, the pictures are automatically copied to my PC, which again is backed up with Backblaze. It doesn’t get any easier than that.