It may sound counter-intuitive, but someone once told me if you rigorously manage the minutiae, you have that much more brain space to be your best creative self. At the time, I thought they sounded waaayyy off base. Why would I spend hours and hours working out systems to manage menial tasks? Shouldn’t I just take care of the tasks instead of building the system? But, a few years and a whole lot of mellowing out later, I’ve come to realize and fully believe that the only way to experience real, true freedom is through meticulous self-discipline and task management.
If you create a process for every little mundane thing in your life, you no longer have to give it a second thought. You don’t have to sit around and think about how to manage “it,” when you will find time for “it,” or what the best way to complete “it” is, no matter what “it” may be.
Here’s an example: laundry—it’s something we all have to do. It takes time but not much brain power. And, worst of all, it’s a never-ending task. It’s something you will have to do for the rest of your life on a routine basis. If you don’t do your laundry regularly, you probably spend way more time than you need to thinking about doing your laundry. When you get ready in the morning you have to worry about finding something you want to wear because your favorites are buried at the bottom of a hamper. When you get home from work you see the pile hanging out in a corner and think about how you really need to take care of it.
The time and the stress of the laundry isn’t the major issue here though, it’s the raw energy. The raw brain power that you are diverting to your laundry. How do you solve it? Create a routine. For me, that means that every Sunday, without fail, I run at least one load of laundry. I never book my Sundays so full that I don’t have time for my routine and I always make sure that before I go to bed on Sunday night, that minimum one load of laundry is washed, dried, folded AND put away. But, most importantly, I don’t even think about it anymore. It has become such habit for me to drag my laundry downstairs on Sunday mornings that I never think about needing to do it.
While I might sound like Sheldon Cooper, I do the same thing with my food. I plan my meals at the start of the week so I don’t have to spend thirty minutes every night agonizing over what we are going to eat, instead, I spend thirty minutes Sunday figuring it out and I never let it cross my mind again. This same concept applies to work tasks.
Each morning, I give myself thirty minutes to focus on nothing but email before I start my tasks for the day, the result? My email never gets backed up and I don’t spend all day having my deep thoughts interrupted by an ever-rising inbox number. Each Monday and Wednesday morning, I have predesignated time to check on each of the sales prospects I’m working on. What does that net? I don’t spend random hours throughout the week scrambling to remember where my last conversation with that person left off or how long ago it was. My all-time favorite minutiae-management hack? My email subject lines. I make them as searchable and consistent as I possibly can. Need client feedback? The subject line becomes “Please Review: Project Name.” Need someone to give you information? “Question: Client Name, Project Name.” Sharing information? Start the subject line with “Notes.”
So, what does this all boil down to? Don’t make life harder than it has to be. Automate your processes. Optimize your life and you’ll be able to optimize your brain. You won’t spend hours wasting time on things that could’ve only occupied minutes. You’ll create good habits and more time in each and every day. While I can’t accurately depict to you the all the ways this kind of automation has helped me be more productive, I can tell you I spend way less time worrying about small things, I sleep better without that pile of dirty socks in the corner of my room, and, most importantly, I’ve earned back time for me to work on personal creative projects. I’ve earned brain space to come up with more creative concepts for my work projects. I’ve earned a sense of calm that allows me to get more done than chaos ever could.
