Living in our day and age means that we will spend most of our lives running a rat race, chasing more time but always feeling busier than ever, and struggling to keep up with everything.
I won’t sugarcoat things as I don’t believe it’s beneficial. Unfortunately, part of adulting means that we will often feel stressed out and overwhelmed. Unless you live on top of a mountain on your own, there’s no way of avoiding it.
However, it is possible to reduce the burden and make life a little bit easier. It’s really all about making certain decisions that will help to improve the quality of your life and reduce stress.
In this blog post, I will share with you 10 effective ways to make life easier and live better.
What does it mean to make life easier?
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There may be some definitions out there about making life easier, but in my opinion, it means three main things:
- Being more intentional with our time
- Being more strategic about our actions/commitments
- Working smarter not harder
These three things contribute to improving the quality of your life so that even though you can’t avoid stress, you can find ways to cope with it and ease the burden.
I’ll be very honest with you and share that I have seasons of my life where I get extremely stressed out. Maybe work is overwhelming, issues with my personal life come up, financial problems take a toll on my mind, and I then hit burnout.
I’m not embarrassed to say that I tend to bottle everything in until one day I just burst into tears at the most inappropriate times.
This is probably the main reason why I’m so passionate about looking after our wellbeing and improving how we manage our lives so that we don’t have to hit burnout consistently.
The following tips have been tried and tested by me personally and they are what helps me keep going and stay sane during hectic times. I recommend them because I believe they can make a massive difference in your life.
They will help you to improve your time management, become more productive, free up more time in your life and finally make your life a little easier.
10 simple but effective ways to make your life easier
Establish routines
If you haven’t jumped on this train yet, you need to do it asap. Routines help you to stay sane even during the craziest seasons. If it wasn’t for my routines, I think I would have been a lot worse a long time ago.
There’s a reason why health professionals recommend we all stick to routines for our mental health, and especially in children and adults with special needs, they can be incredibly beneficial.
When you implement routines in your life, you become used to doing things a certain way, so much so that eventually your mind operates automatically as you become accustomed.
I personally wouldn’t be the same without my morning and evening routines, and I always say that when I miss either of them, I feel all over the place.
Delegate/Automate
Nothing makes life easier than delegating or automating tasks; before you come off this page, let me tell you that it doesn’t have to break the bank.
Delegating/automating will free up time in your life, or will help you avoid certain things that you dread or that make you feel stressed out.
Of course, it’s not always possible to do this but if you can, I’d highly recommend it.
A few things you can do in regards to this are as follows.
If you want to delegate/automate in your business:
- Automate your content schedule
- Automate your invoices
- Delegate your content creation if you can pay someone else
- Automate your booking systems
- Delegate social media engagement to a VA
If you want to delegate/automate in your personal life:
- Delegate your laundry service
- Delegate your grocery shopping by placing an order online and getting them delivered
- Delegate cooking to a meal prep company that will deliver ready-to-eat food to you
- Hire a cleaning person with a frequency based on your budget
Declutter
Have you ever considered how much stress clutter adds to your life and how much time it takes away?
Whenever I walk into a messy place, I immediately feel overwhelmed. I might be OCD or I might just know that a cluttered place never helped anyone.
Decluttering will help you make your life easier and save yourself a ton of time.
You should declutter your physical spaces such as your home, your car, your wardrobe, but also the digital spaces such as your phone, your inbox and your laptop.
Have boundaries
Another major cause of stress in life is a lack of boundaries.
When we allow anyone access to our time and space, we start realising that we don’t have that much time for ourselves anymore and that we also don’t have enough capacity to meet everyone’s expectations.
Establishing boundaries will help you make your life easier, choose where to place your time strategically, and protect your peace.
Stop procrastinating
Procrastination is the source of so many problems!
I know it’s not easy to bring ourselves to do a dreaded task, but our lack of action will have such a negative impact in the long term.
If you really want to make your life easier, start by ditching procrastination and taking action now, no matter what task you need to do.
If you want to learn more about procrastination, check out this post!
Schedule white space
As much as I advocate blocking everything out in your calendar and being as productive as you can with your time, I’m also a huge fan of white space.
White space is a time where you don’t do anything but allow yourself to simply be and just rest.
It’s extremely important to do this if you want to avoid burnout and have a balanced lifestyle. In a society where everyone goes at 1000/mph, it’s necessary to slow down occasionally and take a deep breath.
Start planning your week
Planning your week ahead will make your life so much easier, you’ll regret not having started before!
Many people start itching when they hear the word planning, but really, this is what helps you keep your sanity and get things done.
One hour on a Sunday evening is enough to establish what is important for you, what you need to get done to move forward in your life and schedule time for fun too.
Set SMART goals
This ties in with the point above, but it’s important that whatever goals you set in your life, and on your daily and weekly planning, is a SMART goal.
That’s because you want to ensure that you can actually achieve what you set yourself to do, find satisfaction and avoid overwhelming situations.
If you want to learn more about setting SMART goals to make your life easier, click here.
Spend time reflecting
This might seem similar to scheduling white space, but on that point, I literally encouraged you to allow yourself to do nothing for a bit.
In this case, however, I’m encouraging you to slow down but to spend your time reflecting on your life.
I normally spend every morning and evening praying and I try to keep consistent with my journalling.
This practice allows me to let go of so much stress, strengthen my faith, and put my thoughts in order.
The people close to me know that when my quiet time is suspended for whatever reason, it’s only a matter of time before I explode.
Be intentional with your health
In case you haven’t thought about this yet, just know that nothing in life will be easier if you don’t have full health.
I’m so passionate about eating healthily, exercising, and looking after my mental health because I want to live a good life, grow old and still be independent and able to live well and just enjoy this beautiful gift.
Unfortunately, stress has a negative impact on our health but I believe that implementing the right practices in your life as well as being intentional with your health, will help you make your life easier and of better quality.
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Final thoughts on 10 ways to make life easier
Whether you decide to try one or ten of these tips, I truly believe that they can have a huge impact on the quality of your life.
Being intentional about making your life easier will take some effort, but it will be totally worth it!
Now your turn: what things do you do on a daily basis to make life easier?
