It’s no secret that everyday life can get busy. If you’re a working parent, you may be unable to make time for the things you want to do for yourself, or even the things you need to do for your children. If you’re a young professional, it may be hard to balance long work days and social time. If you’re a student, classes may be overwhelming, leaving you unable to focus on yourself. No matter your phase of life, you may just look for ways to make things just a little easier and make sure small, but necessary, tasks don’t slip through the cracks. This is where technology and automation come in.
While you can’t always make technology do all the work for you, there are several ways in which technology can lend a helping hand and take some simple tasks off your plate. Automating tasks through technology can lighten your workload and give you one less thing to worry about. Outsourcing these activities ultimately allows you to give attention to the things that matter most and increase your efficiency day-to-day.
Posting on Social Media
While social media is often considered a leisure activity and an entertaining outlet for some, it’s also a source of work and revenue for others. Maintaining an active social presence may be integral to a successful business or other professional endeavors. As a business owner, influencer, independent contractor, or entrepreneur, finding the time to post and promote your work during peak times may be a challenge while balancing other everyday tasks.
The good news is social media posting can be easily automated through apps like Hootsuite and Buffer. Through these apps, you can schedule content on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more. Another benefit of these platforms is they allow you to manage your accounts from one place and track your performance. This means you can take some time on a Sunday night to schedule your weekly content without sacrificing time during the week. Not only is this a huge time saver throughout the week, but these apps can also give you insight into how well your previous content performed when you sit down to schedule another round of content. Although you still have to write the posts, being able to do it all at once saves you from logging on to each app throughout the day or week to post content.
Paying Bills
Automatic bill payments have been around for years, but they remain a great way to automate daily tasks that can be easily forgotten among a long list of to-dos. Paying bills on time is an important part of your credit score, and forgetting a payment can be detrimental to your financial health, and can cost you in late fees. Consider outsourcing your most important bills to automatic payments.
Most banks, financial institutions, and even companies like PayPal have options for managing online subscriptions and automatic payments so you know what is coming out of your account and when without having to remind yourself to do it. It’s also more secure than sending a check in the mail, as encryption technology protects your sensitive information.
Sending Emails
Whether you’re preparing a reminder email for your co-workers, writing a weekly wrap-up before you leave the office for the weekend, or leaving yourself countless reminders to send a Monday morning follow-up, you may leave the message sitting as a draft until you’re ready to hit send. This could lead to sending important communications late or forgetting altogether.
Aside from applications like Gmail that have tools that allow for scheduling emails, there are other applications that can automate reminders or follow-ups to people you’ve reached out to. Instead of checking your emails daily and keeping track of how many days it’s been since you last contacted someone, apps like Followup can help. This app is compatible with Gmail and allows you to set reminders, as well as schedule and automate follow-ups to prevent you from losing connections.
Making Daily To-Do Lists
When you have so much to do, it’s easy for small tasks to slip through the cracks. Daily and weekly to-do lists are essential for professional and personal life to be more efficient. It also holds you accountable for all of life’s demands. While there’s a lot of satisfaction to be had in crossing something off a handwritten to-do list, apps like Zapier can automate your to-do lists to make it even easier.
These apps can help you prioritize big tasks, but can also set up recurring tasks for your daily to-do list so you don’t have to think about it. Zapier and other apps are often compatible with Gmail software and other workflow and communication systems to make it as effortless as possible.
Whether you feel like you just don’t have enough time in your day to get things done, or would rather pass the work off to someone (or something) else, there are many ways technology and automation can help ease the burden. While technology may seem overwhelming to keep up with in today’s day and age, it also serves as a great tool to make life a little easier.