The automated life: Make 24 hours feel like 25
Sunday, July 19, 2015
“So much to do, so little time,” says nearly everyone. If you can’t add an extra hour to the day, try to save time throughout it. By automating tedious yet essential tasks, you can recover valuable minutes. Here are a few tools and apps to make your everyday activities more efficient.
Waking Up
Yes, you can automate waking up every morning. How? Smartphone sleep apps can track your movements throughout the night, and then wake you upat the optimal time in your sleep cycle—all to help you avoid hitting snooze seven times. For iPhone users, download Sleep Cycle and for Android users, download Sleep As Android.
Store Contact Info
You’re always meeting new people, especially at different conferences and boards you may be on. Instead of manually entering your new contacts’ information, just scan their business cards with the ABBYY Business Card Reader. The other upside—no more stacks of 3.5 x 2 inch paper collecting on your desk.
Proofreading
A spell-checker can miss a number of errors, and going through documents with a fine-tooth comb is time-consuming. That’s where Grammarly.com comes in. By uploading documents to the site or downloading the browser extension, the tool will correct grammatical errors and catch contextual spelling mistakes and poor vocabulary usage.
Driving
You might think it’s easier just to take the same route to and from work every day, even if that means sitting in traffic. What if mixing up your route-ine could mean saving a few minutes? Try out Waze. Once you put in your destination, it takes into account traffic, construction zones and other factors that might slow you down to take you on the fastest route to where you’re going.
Cooking
Imagine a tool that plans your meals and takes into account aspecial diet you’re on or any allergies you may have. That’s what MealMixer.com does. It plans your meals for the week, then sends you easy recipes and the grocery list of ingredients. Speaking of a grocery list—see if any grocery stores in your area offer a delivery service to save even more time.
What tools are you using to automate your life?
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