What is automation?
How many times a day do you say to yourself, “I wish I had more time” or “I wish I had more money”? Automation is the answer to both of those issues. It can make a lot of things a whole lot easier.
By beginning to find ways to automate your life, you will save time, energy, and hopefully some money. This way, you can focus your energy on the things that matter. Like spending time with your family or having a romantic evening with your partner. Or even just a bit of Me Time.
Automating some of your daily activities can mean you don’t have to keep checking your phone or calendar throughout the day or waste time on distracting tasks. It’ll make your life feel a bit more streamlined and in order, with very little work from you.
Bills
There are probably bills coming out of your ears—phone, electricity, car insurance, cable, etc. There are so many that it can be hard to track what needs to be paid and when.
Either through your bank or your supplier, you can set up an automated payment, so all your bills are paid at one time or on a schedule. Set it up once and never think about it again, knowing everything is paid.
No more stress and no more late payment fees for the bill you forgot!
Grocery shopping
There is nothing worse than having to do a food shop. You go into a crowded grocery store with a list and come out with a headache, many things that weren’t on the list, and a massive chunk of your paycheck suddenly gone.
There must be an easier and quicker way?
Many stores do deliveries or collections by shopping online. You pick up all your groceries and then have them delivered when it suits you, or go pick them all up. You will be way less likely to be tempted by treats as you walk down the aisles!
Plus, it’s much easier to spot a bargain or a cheap version of something you usually have on your grocery lists. So you are saving yourself time and effort and a few pennies off your weekly grocery shopping.
You can also set up a repeated delivery. If you know that you have to buy the same items every week or fortnight, stick them on a list, and they will automatically be delivered to you on a set schedule.
Never worry about running out of toilet paper again!
Meal planning
Various services can make weekly cooking meals much more accessible. If you like to prep and cook your meals, you can get inspiration from recipe apps. For example, you could compile some of your favorite recipes together and put them into a meal planning app that will tell you what you need for the week ahead.
This will save you from buying unnecessary groceries and having lots of food waste. It also reduces the amount of stress involved with planning to have a pre-determined menu to cook from.
Alternatively, you could get meal kits delivered. For example, subscribe to a service such as Hello Fresh. You can choose from many recipes, and they will deliver the ingredients for your favorite recipes to your home.
The packs contain pre-measured ingredients and a step-by-step preparation guide. This reduces the time for prepping, shopping, and planning and can make cooking a lot more enjoyable.
It is beneficial if you have specific dietary needs and struggle for inspiration.
Clothing
Unfortunately, no apps can clear out your closet for you. You have to do that yourself, but it can be a cathartic process! Once you have removed all garments you don’t wear, you could sell them online.
There are so many apps to sell clothes from. Have a look around and see what people in your area use. This can encourage a regular declutter and help make a few extra cents on the side.
You can also automate your clothing by having a simple style. Think Steve Jobs. He wore the same outfit every day and probably saved a lot of time. Have a wardrobe with block colors that you can mix and match to make easier decisions in the morning.
You could arrange your clothes in color, order, style, or occasion. Save time in your mornings by not having to make so many clothing decisions.
Phone
We all spend an awful lot of time on our phones. There’s no denying that. Sometimes it is productive and valuable. Other times we are just browsing the internet mindlessly. Sometimes you start doing something productive and then get distracted by animal videos instead. We’ve all been there.
Reduce your phone usage by using apps to help with organization and timings. For example, if you are constantly checking the time on your mobile device, set a reminder instead. Then put your phone down and forget about it.
Smartphones are so brilliant. You can program them to do just about anything.
Make your life easier and quieter by ensuring your phone automatically turns itself silent during your work time.
Use IFTTT to streamline your apps, so they all talk to each other. For example, that deadline your boss just reminded you about in an email has gone automatically into your google calendar, so you don’t have to remember anything.
IFTTT will take information from one app and share it with others to make your life more manageable.
Home
Everyone has an Amazon Alexa, Amazon Echo, or Google Home. This is the epitome of home automation. You can ask it to do something, and it’s done.
They can remind you to do things, update your grocery list, or order more coffee beans from the web if you’re running low.
They can even help with your lowering bills by checking the temperature and turning down the thermostat in the house for you.
Save money
Budget
If you struggle to budget, there’s an app for that too. There are various apps to help with money, budget, or saving. You can use a budget app to tell you how much you have recently spent, how much you have left after your outgoing payments, and how to use your remaining money carefully.
Savings account
Similarly, there are apps to help you save. For example, you can set up certain apps to automatically take small amounts into a savings account.
Or you can program a set amount to be moved each month. This process can make paying bills a lot less stressful. Finally, you can set up an account for your bill budget to go insular payments.
This way, you never have to worry about having the money to pay your monthly bills! It will be all there, ready to go, so you can also set up automatic bill pay.
Emails
Checking emails can be so time-consuming and use a LOT of mental energy. It’s usually spam or boring stuff from colleagues who hit reply unnecessarily.
There are various ways to make emails a bit less daunting.
You can set alerts so that if you get an email from your boss or an important client, it makes noise. But for everyone else, there is no alert. This way, you don’t have to keep checking your inbox for important stuff because you’ll know when something important is sent to you.
And you don’t have to waste your time reading pointless emails either.
Try to have a good clean-up of your inbox. Unsubscribe from mail lists you don’t want instead of having to delete the emails every day. It might take a while to unsubscribe from them all, but it’ll save you time later.
You could create categorized folders for emails to go into when they’re essential. So, anything left in your inbox can be deleted, and new emails are easy to sift through.
Chores
I’m afraid that automation isn’t going to clean the house for you. But it can make doing the chores a lot simpler.
You can use several free list-making apps to help you create a list to break down the tasks you need and help you schedule them into your day. It might seem less of a hassle if your chores are separated into manageable chunks.
Subscription
Think about all the things you buy from the store aside from your groceries. For example, you might often buy make-up, magazines, razors, and clothes.
You could subscribe to services that automatically deliver these things to you. You put in your preferences, and regularly, you receive a parcel. Often, you can send back things you don’t like to be replaced.
Consider whether this service is going to be useful for you. For some people, this might be an unnecessary extra expense, but it could help save money and time for others.
Conclusion
Automation helps you manage a variety of daily decisions, enables you to track what you spend, and lets you to get essential things done.
Hopefully, these examples can help you automate your own life, from having your groceries delivered to planning your life daily.
Many of these services are free, or you pay a small amount once.
Pick an example from the list and give it a go!