As parents, we try to squeeze every minute out of our days and we still ask ourselves, "Where did all of my time go?". Before I dive into how I save valuable hours in my week, it's important to know how to be a master at productivity.
Here are some tips from Marius Ursache:
- Decide what's important because in 5 years, 80% of what you do today will not turn into anything. It's just busywork, no useful outcome.
- Sleep, food, and exercise can help you triple your outcome, because they increase focus, motivation, and energy levels.
- Seinfeld's productivity chain: if you want to be good at something, do it every day. Including on Christmas, Easter, and Judgement Day. No exceptions.
- Your memory sucks. Get everything out of your head, even if you're a genius. Write it down in a notebook, put it in your todo-list app, on your phone, talk to Siri, I don't care.
- Routine beats tools. You need discipline, and this means for me two things: I plan my day first thing in the morning, and I write a short daily log every day. This helps you stay sane, prioritize well, scrap useless tasks, and do what matters. This saves hours.
Now, here are my hacks that you can start right now to save time as a parent:
- Get your groceries delivered. Get an Amazon Prime account or see if your local grocery store delivers and get all of your needed items delivered to your door on a regular schedule. Trust me, this will save you hours.
- Connect your cameras. This is a niche hack, but an automated home saves me so much time and keeps me sane during the day. If I am working hard on a project and want to check on the kids, I can just quickly look in another internet tab and communicate with them from another room. This is perfect for a work-at-home dad, like me.
- Food Prep. This hack can be daunting at first, but once you get used to the routine, it opens up time to play with the kids after work instead of cooking. Food prepping also helps you provide healthy and balanced meals for your family with 1/2 the effort.
- Exercise with your kid. There are many ways that you can turn play-time into a workout for mom or dad. Think of games that your kids will love that will also get your heart-rate up and kill two birds with one stone.
There are many ways to save time as a parent — these are my tried and true hacks that have saved me serious time. How do you extend your days?
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