Life Hacks and Random Thoughts, Part 1
Published 15 May 05 by Justin French, 6 comments
Hire a cleaner
Life is too short to spend your weekends cleaning the bathroom, mopping floors and dusting your possessions. We hired a cleaner to come through our house two hours every two weeks for a more than reasonable AU$40, and it’s done nothing short of change our lives. Not only do we not have to do this stuff anymore, but we don’t even have to think about doing this stuff.
Never under estimate the power of a minute
I know this sounds like complete BS from a late night TV motivational speaker (and that’s probably where I first heard it!), but it’s completely true.
Are you really too busy to answer that email, call your parents, take the rubbish out, put on a load of washing, etc?
Don’t check your email every 5 minutes
Seriously, you’re never going to get anything done if you’ve got your email program set to check for new email every 5 minutes. Chances are, there’s always going to be new mail, and that little red “15 unread messages” in the Dock icon is going to distract you from what you’re doing far too often and you’ll never get to concentrate on anything.
I’m personally checking every 30 minutes at the moment, and I’m thinking even every hour might be more than enough. It can wait.
Same applies to RSS readers and anything else that can break you concentration.
Ask for help
Let’s say you’re having trouble with a chunk of code, or a concept, or something which you just can’t nail. You’ve got two options here:
- keep hacking away at it until you solve it, or
- ask for help from someone more knowledgeable on the topic
The way I see it, smart people recognise their limitations, value their time, and see the advantage in getting help. If you put a $ value on your time, it’s easy to weigh up the time involved in “working it out for yourself” against the cost of getting help.
And of course, pay these people for their help – even if they don’t ask for it. Send them some money via PayPal, buy them a drink, buy something off their Amazon wish list, see if you can help them with something in return, etc.
Invest in something you can believe in
Don’t sit back and wait for shit to happen. Pour everything you can spare into something you believe in. That investment could be in the form of money, but time, ideas, knowledge & skills are equally valuable.
The “something” could be a business idea, a product, a service, a relationship, a local soup kitchen, a community initiative… I could go on, but this is your dream right?
Sure, it may turn out to be an incredibly poor choice of investment, but there’s only one way to find out.
Please share your own nuggets of wisdom in the comments, or send me an email.