11 Ways to Automate Your Life (and Get Back More Free Time)

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We lose time in small increments. Simple, everyday tasks and chores might only take a few minutes, but those minutes add up and can have a serious impact on your stress levels. But take heart: We’re living in the future, and you can easily automate a wide range of many everyday tasks, gaining back precious minutes and even hours.

Automate grocery shopping

If your grocery list is pretty stable—you buy the same things in the same quantities every time you stock the pantry—you can automate it to a large extent. Amazon Fresh allows you to set up repeat items that get added to your shopping cart and automatically delivered during your selected window. You can put together a standard weekly list and Amazon will deliver your groceries to you on the selected day, without you having to think about it. You can make adjustments at any time, so if you’re not eating those cornflakes as fast as you thought you can change the quantity or the frequency of the delivery.

If you don’t want to give Amazon any more of your money, most grocery chains offer similar services through their web sites and apps. Acme Markets, for example, offers a Schedule and Save feature that operates the same way: You set up a “subscription” for items with a regular schedule and the items are delivered to you automatically until you make changes.

Start automatically saving

It can be a struggle to save money—most people couldn’t scrape together $1,000 if they had to, which is not an ideal place to be. If you’ve tried to save money and repeatedly failed to reach your savings goals, try automating it by simply adjusting your direct deposit or scheduling automatic transfers from one account to another. Changing your direct deposit is usually a matter of filling out a form (you may even be able to do it online through a portal, if your employer has one), and you can set up automatic transfers through your banking app at any time. Even a relatively small transfer will add up, and you won’t have to remind yourself to do it.

Put your bills on an automatic payment schedule

If you’re currently spending some time every week keeping up with your bills, it’s time to set up automatic payments for most things. Most companies and vendors these days offer the option of setting up automatic payments, so setting this up for just about every bill that comes your way should be relatively easy.

Of course, you will still need to track those payments and make sure you’re being billed correctly, and you should make sure the vendor offers an easy way to stop automatic payments if you ever change your mind. You can always revoke their access to your bank account if this proves difficult, but it’s best to check their policies before you dive in.

Use pharmacy services to automate prescriptions

If you have any regular prescriptions, you know that managing refills can be a real time-suck. Many pharmacy chains like CVS and online pharmacies like Express Scripts let you easily set up automatic refills—when your medications run low, they’ll process the next refill and deliver a fresh supply to you automatically (and even contact your doctor if you’re out of refills).

Have a robot clean the floors

If you hate cleaning your place you might have already hired professional cleaners to come in on a regular basis and make it look like a civilized human being lives there. If not, you can automate some of the cleaning by setting up not just a robot vacuum, but a robot vacuum and mop (like this one, or this one). It will patrol the floors, sucking up grit and dust, and when it encounters a spill or a stain it spritzes the area with a cleaning solution and mops up—while you do other things with your time.

Automate your pool maintenance

If you have a pool, you know that keeping it clean can take up several hours of your week. You can automate a lot of that by investing in a pool-cleaning robot that will do all that dirty work for you, leaving you more time to actually enjoy your pool.

But wait! There’s more: You can automate just about every aspect of pool maintenance, from monitoring (and adjusting) chemical and water levels to surface skimming. Once you have everything set up, you can just, you know, enjoy your pool.

Let a robot mow your lawn

If you have a lawn, you probably spend about eight hours a year mowing it. That might not sound like a lot, but imagine what you could do with an extra eight hours—that’s about half an hour each week you get back. Setting up a robotic lawn mower along with a sprinkler system on a timer will automate the bulk of your lawn maintenance, giving you a chance to finally break in that hammock.

Use AI-powered tools to job search

Looking for a new job is probably the biggest time sink known to man. Sifting through hundreds of listings, tweaking your resume, filling out applications, writing mission statements and cover letters—it’s an exhausting grind. And that’s before you even get an interview.

Using AI-powered tools like Sonara, Massive, LazyApply, and LoopCV all work similarly: You load up your resume and set some parameters, then they scour the internet looking for job descriptions that match. Then they automatically fill out applications and send in your resume while you’re busy doing other things. While your job search still won’t be quite “set it and forget it,” you can automate the tedious parts to gain back some free time (and reduce your job search-related stress).

Install smart window treatments

Carve out little bits of time every day by installing smart window treatments (like these automatic shades) that can be programmed to rise and fall on a set schedule, so you won’t have to think about maximizing your light situation anymore.

Set up a meal service

Cooking can take a fair amount of time out of your day, even if you don’t include the grocery shopping. Setting up an automated, oven-ready meal service like Home Chef means that prepared meals are delivered to your house, in their own oven-safe tin. All you do is pop them into the oven, pop them out, and eat.

Use a laundry service

If you spend a lot of your time doing (and folding) laundry, you can automate this by finding a laundry service in your area that will pick up, clean, and deliver—a lot of dry cleaners and laundromats offer the service. If you can’t find a local place to do it, you can check if a national service like Poplin works in your area. Most will pick up your dirty clothes and return them to you—washed and folded—within a day. What you do with the time you’re not doing laundry is entirely up to you.

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