How to Make Work Feel Effortless

Sometimes work can be a drag. You get caught up in trying to be more productive and suddenly your life turns into a series of to-do lists. You gauge your measure of success by how much you accomplish. You even determine how happy you allow yourself to be by how much you’ve gotten done in the day.

We spend a lot of time trying to find ways to be more productive. To do things faster, better, cheaper and spend our time more effectively. But instead of just doing more in less time, maybe we should focus on actually enjoying the work we’re doing instead.

Here are 8 ways to make work seem like less of a chore and more like a gift:

1. Follow your natural rhythms. A lot of the time I resent working is because I’m trying to force myself to do something I don’t feel like doing. Naturally there will always be some things you’re not crazy about doing (like cleaning the toilet). But how often do you force yourself to work more, when you really want to relax? When you force yourself to work when you’ve promised yourself a break, you’ll likely just end up distracting yourself with other things and put off working. Then you get stressed and end up resenting work. Instead, follow your natural rhythms. When you feel like working, work. When you don’t, don’t. Don’t over complicate things.
2. Do, don’t think. I’m going to stay true to this point and not think about writing something elaborate. Just do, stop thinking about it. Fail, make corrections later.
3. Don’t put sugar in your tank. You wouldn’t put sugar in your gas tank right? It doesn’t make much sense to fill your body up with unhealthy fuel either. If you don’t have the energy to get the work you need to done, work will feel forced.
4. Remove hidden roadblocks. What’s making you avoid working? What’s making your work seem like drudgery rather than joyful? It might have something to do with your beliefs about yourself. Maybe you believe you’re not good enough, smart enough or don’t have enough experience. Question your beliefs about what you can and can’t do.
5. Only do your best. Work can easily become a chore when you’re trying to constantly be perfect. The truth is, some of your ideas might not be so great. Others will be mind blowing. If you can accept that and just do your best, you stop judging yourself. Guess what it feels like when you’re no longer picking over everything you do with a fine toothed comb? It feels extremely liberating. It feels like you can actually enjoy your experience, rather than worrying about how everything is going to turn out. That is working effortlessly.
6. Act from your gut. When you think you have a great idea, believe it. Follow it. Chase it until you’re out of breath and can barely hold yourself up. Because if you don’t trust yourself, you’ll regret it later. The best way to live is to follow your intuition and trust life. If nothing else, trust yourself. Because if you can’t trust yourself, how can you trust your mistrust? That’s not very smart is it?
7. Focus on what matters. Our minds are constantly pulling us in different directions. We have to wash the cat, buy more apple cinnamon oatmeal, finish writing that resignation letter to your no-longer-boss at your dead-end job, and all sorts of other things. We have a tendency to follow what’s urgent instead of what’s important. In order to get the important things done, we have to be ruthless at removing distractions. If it takes bringing a laptop (or notepad) to a cafe to write your grandiose novel, then do that. Avoid the vacuum of minutiae urgency. Remove all distractions so you can focus on the important things. I would much rather spend 4 hours working on an important project, then 4 hours spinning my wheels and scratching my head trying to figure out what I did today.
8. Refuse to do what you don’t want to do. I often avoid working because I’m trying to do things I think I “should do.” I think I should read more because it will make me smarter. I think I should buy new clothes because it will make me cooler. I think I should work on this project because it will be good for my resume. Forget what you think you should do (except maybe… paying your rent). Do what you want to do. Other people will understand. In fact, they’ll probably envy you.

20 Great Ways to Find More Free Time

Are there a hundred different things you wish you could do with your life someday — anything from exercising to meditation or yoga to writing that novel you always wished you could write to reading more to relaxing and watching the sunrise? But perhaps you never have the time, like most people.

The truth is, we all have the same amount of time, and it’s finite and in great demand. But some of us have made the time for doing the things we love doing, and others have allowed the constant demands and pressures and responsibilities of life to dictate their days.

It’s time to move from the second group back into the first. Reclaim your time. Create the life you want and make the most of the free time you lay claim to. It’s not hard, though it does take a little bit of effort and diligence.

Not all of these will be applicable to your life — choose the ones you can apply and give them a try:

1. Take a time out. Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take a good look at your life. You need to block off at least an hour. Several hours or half a day is better. A whole day would be awesome. A weekend would be even more ideal, though not necessary practical for many folks. With this block of time, take a look at your life with some perspective. Is it what you’ve always wanted? How would you get to where you’ve always wanted to be? What do you enjoy doing, but don’t have enough time to do? What things actually fill up your day? Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time? We’ll look at some of these things in the following items, but it starts with taking a time out to think and plan.
2. Find your essentials. What is it that you love to do? Make a short list of 4-5 things. These are the things you want to make room for.
3. Find your time-wasters. What do you spend a lot of your time on that isn’t on your essential list? Take a close look at these things and really think about whether they’re necessary, or if there are ways to reduce, minimize or eliminate these things. Sometimes you do things because you assume they’re necessary, but if you give it some thought you can find ways to drop them from your life. Figure out what you do simply to waste time — maybe surfing certain sites, watching TV, talking a lot at the water cooler, etc. You’re going to want to minimize these time-wasters to make room for the more important stuff, the stuff that makes you happy and that you love to do.
4. Schedule the time. As you sit down and think about your life and what you want to do, versus what you actually do, you will be looking at ways to free up time. It’s crucial that you take a blank weekly schedule (you can just write it out on a piece of paper, or use your calendar) and assign blocks for the things you love — the stuff on your essentials list. If you want to exercise, for example, when will you do it? Put the blocks of time on your schedule, and make these blocks the most important appointments of your week. Schedule the rest of your life around these blocks.
5. Consolidate. There are many things you do, scattered throughout your day or your week, that you might be able to consolidate in order to save time. A good example is errands — instead of running one or two a day, do them all in one day to save time and gas. Another example is email, or any kind of communication — batch process your email instead of checking and reading and responding throughout the day. Same thing with meetings, paperwork, anything that you do regularly.
6. Cut out meetings. This isn’t possible for everyone, but in my experience meetings take up a lot of time to get across a little information, or to make easy decisions that could be made via email or phone. As much as you can, minimize the number of meetings you hold and attend. In some cases this might mean talking to your boss and telling her that you have other priorities, and asking to be excused. In other cases this might mean asking the people holding the meeting if you can get the info in other ways. If so, you’ve saved yourself an hour or so per meeting (sometimes more).
7. De clutter your schedule. If you have a heavily packed schedule, full of meetings and errands and tasks and projects and appointments, you’re going to want to weed it out so that it’s not so jam-packed. Find the stuff that’s not so essential and cancel them. Postpone other stuff. Leave big blank spaces in your schedule.
8. Re-think your routine. Often we get stuck in a routine that’s anything but what we really want our days to be like. Is there a better way of doing things? You’re the creator of your life — make a new routine that’s more pleasant, more optimal, more filled with things you love.
9. Cut back on email. I mentioned email in an earlier point above, regarding consolidating, but it’s such a major part of most people’s lives that it deserves special attention. How often do you check email? How much time do you spend composing emails? If you spend a major part of your work day on email, as many people do (and as I once did), you can free up a lot of time by reducing the time you spend in email. Now, this won’t work for everyone, but it can work for many people: choose 2-3 key times during the day to process your inbox to empty, and keep your responses to 5 sentences.
10. Learn to say no. If you say “yes” to every request, you will never have any free time. Get super protective about your time, and say “no” to everything but the essential requests.
11. Keep your list to 3. When you make out your daily to-do list, just list the three Most Important Tasks you want to accomplish today. Don’t make a laundry list of tasks, or you’ll fill up all your free time. By keeping your task list small, but populated only by important tasks, you ensure that you are getting the important stuff done but not overloading yourself.
12. Do your Biggest Rock first. Of the three Most Important Tasks you choose for the day, pick the biggest one, or the one you’re dreading most, and do that first. Otherwise you’ll put that off as much as possible and fill your day with less important things. Don’t allow yourself to check email until that Big Rock is taken care of. It starts your day with a sense of major accomplishment, and leaves you with a lot of free time the rest of the day, because the most important thing is already done.
13. Delegate. If you have subordinates or coworkers who can do a task or project, try to delegate it. Don’t feel like you need to do everything yourself. If necessary, spend a little time training the person to whom you’re delegating the task, but that little time spent training will pay off in a lot of time saved later. Delegating allows you to focus on the core tasks and projects you should be focusing on.
14. Cut out distractions. What is there around your workspace that distracts you from the task at hand? Sometimes it’s visual clutter, or papers lying around that call for your attention and action, or email or IM notifiers on your computer that pop up at the wrong time, or the phone, or coworkers. See if you can eliminate as many of these as possible — the more you can focus, the more effective you’ll be and the less time you’ll waste. That equals time saved for the good stuff.
15. Disconnect. The biggest of distractions, for most people, is the Internet. My most productive times are when I’m disconnected from the grid. Now, I’m not saying you need to be disconnected all the time, but if you really want to be able to effectively complete tasks, disconnect your Internet so you can really focus. Set certain times of the day for connectivity, and only connect during those periods.
16. Outsource. If you can’t delegate, see if you can outsource. With the Internet, we can connect with people from all over the world. I’ve outsourced many things, from small tasks to checking email to legal work to design and editing work and more. That allows me to focus on the things I’m best at, the things I love doing, and saves me a lot of time.
17. Make use of your mornings. I find that mornings are the absolute best times to schedule the things I really want to do. I run, read and write in the mornings — three of the four things on my Essentials List (spending time with family is the other thing on the list). Mornings are great because your day hasn’t been filled with a bunch of unscheduled, demanding, last-minute tasks that will push back those Essentials. For example, if you schedule something for late afternoon, by the time late afternoon rolls around, you might have a dozen other things newly added to your to-do list, and you’ll put off that late-afternoon Essential. Instead, schedule it for the morning, and it’ll rarely (if ever) get pushed back.
18. The Golden Right-after-work Time. Other than mornings, I find the time just after work to be an incredible time for doing Essential things. Exercise, for example, is great in the 5-o’clock hour, as is spending time with family, or doing anything else relaxing.
19. Your evenings. The time before you go to bed is also golden, as it exists every single day, and it’s usually completely yours to schedule. What do you want to do with this time? Read? Spend time with your kids? Work on a hobby you’re passionate about? Take advantage of this time.
20. Lunch breaks. If the three golden times mentioned above don’t work for you, lunch breaks are another good opportunity to schedule things. Some people like to exercise, or to take quiet times, during their lunch breaks. Others use this time to work on an important personal goal or project.