How To Get More Out Of Your Life In the Same Limited 24 Hours

You’ll be able to see clearly, focus on what matters, and double down on everything you enjoy.

If you’ve felt stressed, powerless, helpless, and frustrated with the “not enough hours in the day” feeling. I’m about to share something that will help you take back a feeling of control. This one simple method has helped me do more in one day than most do in a week.

What Is Essentialism?

Imagine having 2-3 extra hours in the day; what would you get done? How much more could you do? Would you work, or use this for free time?

Many of us have tasks that we do every day, but most of us don’t have a system for these tasks. This leaves us with a haphazard way of doing most things, which is very inefficient.

Essentialism is about streamlining the way you do things to increase efficiency and output and decrease decision fatigue, which happens when you are forced to make decisions over and over, no matter what size the problem or thought.

I’ve learned from the book: Essentialism which I suggest you read if you want to dive deeper into this subject. And some are from other outside areas that I’ve compiled together over my years of study and practice on productivity.

How you do something is important, if it takes up too much energy and doesn’t provide sufficient results, it’s probably not worth doing. For example: How you decide on what to for breakfast.

Maybe you go to the kitchen, open up the refrigerator, look at the eggs, think to yourself, well I just had eggs yesterday, then you go to the cabinet, look at the cereal boxes, then you think to yourself, do I have enough milk? Then you’re back to the fridge to check the status of the milk. Damn, I’m exhausted just typing this up.

This, folks, is a perfect example of decision fatigue. These small micro decisions are killers of productivity and the bandwidth that you have stored for the day.

Let’s start with your “life bar” when you wake up- your willpower and decision-making health is at 100% – but as the day goes by, it slowly drops. Depending on how your morning goes, by lunch, you could be at 75% or 25%. The goal is to keep that bar as high as possible to use the stored energy on important tasks.

Maintaining A Full Energy Bar With Routines

There’re several ways to maintain a full energy bar, but one of the quickest ways is to implement a routine into your life.

We all do the same thing every morning. Wake up, eat, bathroom, brush teeth, coffee, shower, read, write, work out, walk the dog, run, tea, gym, you name it. There are things we do each morning, but the ORDER in which most people do them is all over the place.

The best thing for you to do is to put all the tasks you do in order. This will create a system for you to follow that will help reduce the decision-making energy you expel.

There will be no more of this: “should I brush my teeth? Well, I want another cup of coffee, and I hate the way my coffee tastes after I brush my teeth, so why don’t I have the cup of coffee first, then I’ll brush my teeth”

Instead, there’s this: “Coffee first, then brush teeth”

It no longer becomes a series of micro questions you’re asking yourself. It just becomes a ritual and process that you follow.

Another way to maintain a full energy bar is by repeating the same thing each day. This may seem boring to some, but it’s critical if you want to increase your output throughout the day.

Eat the same breakfast every morning – something healthy that will be good for you in the long run. No muffins every day.

Wear the same clothes every day. I wear a plain white T-Shirt every day. I’ve purchased 20 of the same brand and they just work. No more micro questions on should I wear this shirt? Does this shirt go with these pants?

If you can’t wear the same clothes every day, one workaround is to lay out your clothes for the next morning. This is also a great idea if you are trying to workout every morning.

By having your clothes out and ready, you are priming your mind for a future task that’s already scheduled into your life.

How To Streamline The Other Shit

Another way to maintain a full energy bar is by batching your work or tasks. By batching, you remove the back and forth (stopping and starting) that happens when you are constantly bombarded with little minutia.

So, ask yourself, what happens on a weekly basis, that I can do once and get everything done?

For Cathryn, it’s the post mail. She collects all the mail throughout the week, and each Sunday goes through everything. There’s no going to the mail, stopping what she is doing, sifting through it, then picking up where she left off. It’s all taken care of at once, each week.

A killer for my energy bar is calls or meetings. I batch all my calls on Monday’s (I’m in the process of moving from Monday’s to Tuesday’s, but that’s a different blog post).

If someone wants to schedule a call with me, or a demo, or a meeting. Guess where it goes? On the Monday schedule. This helps clear up the rest of my week for proactive work that will drive the business and my life further.

Start asking yourself, what can you do once, that will produce the same residual results throughout the week.

There’s Freedom In Structure

Many of you who just read this will think “this sounds so boring” who the hell wants to live their life like a damn robot? Doing the same thing over and over again?

I had this same mindset as well. But on the contrary, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Because all these little decisions and things we have to do on a daily and weekly basis are now taken care of, it allows more freedom.

Using breakfast as an example. Because you didn’t have a system in place, maybe you had to run to the store to get the things you needed. But at the store, you decided because you’re there you’d pick up things for the week. Now your quick breakfast run turned into a 45-minute food shopping first thing in the morning, which backed up the rest of your day. Then a friend calls and asks to hang out or join in something fun. Because you wasted your morning, you now need to “play catch-up” and can’t join in the spontaneous invitation.

Essentialism drives more of the things you enjoy and want in your life while taking care of the less important tasks.

Once you adopt this new principle you’ll find that there is freedom in structure. You’ll enjoy the things that actually move the needle of your life’s enjoyment and purpose forward.