5 Ways to Automate Your Life

Hello Autopilot!

As members of Gen Y you already know that the internet is a beautiful thing. You can communicate with people half way across the world, start your own business from your living room, and find just about anything you need without having to set foot in a library.

But did you also know the internet can help you automate your life?

A co-worker let me borrow Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week and I’ve decided to not only implement some of the strategies in the book, but also share what I’m doing with you all so that you too can begin to enjoy your life by putting some things on autopilot.

The point is to automate whatever you can so that you can get back to living. The strategies also strive to help you waste less time on pointless tasks and be more productive.

1. Automatic Bill Pay

This alone will save you so much time it’s not even funny. I’m sure most of you already use online banking anyway so why not make it work for you?

Long gone are the days of wasting time writing checks; something you may be better off not doing anyway seeing as how several companies have already been sued for withholding checks past their due date in order to cash in on fees. Don’t believe me? Check out the startling documentary Maxed Out. I’m quite positive that several of you don’t even know where your checkbook is, but you might want to let your parents and grandparents know of the risks of sending out checks just in case.

Speaking from experience, I used to be one of those people who would manually transfer money from my bank account to pay my bills. I’d never even thought of using automatic bill pay until recently. I made a list of all my bills, added them up, and now make sure that my checking account never goes below that number. My bills are then automatically paid via my checking account on their due dates. No missed payments, no late fees, and you have automatic proof of payment received sent straight to your inbox. The best part is I don’t have to waste my time doing it manually so that I can get on to more important things.

On a business level, if more of them used this they could actually use their newfound time to get more clients through the door. It’s a beautiful thing, really.

2. Automating Social Media and Email Lists

This is particularly useful for all you digital entrepreneurs out there. Make sure to link all of your social media accounts to each other and your blog. That way, when your blog is updated everything else is automatically is too – from your Facebook page to your Twitter. Furthermore, when you update your Facebook page it automatically gets sent to Twitter.

You can also join a networking site like Triberr so that other members in your group automatically Tweet your blog updates (Thanks for the tip Justice Wordlaw!).

For those of you who use email lists as a means of marketing, just make sure to set up the appropriate auto-responders and schedule them to send out periodically without you having to touch anything. You can also link your blog RSS so that your subscribers can get your blog updates automatically in their inbox.

3. Automatic Investing

Thanks to Dollar Cost Averaging (investing small amounts over a long period of time) you can automatically set up monthly investments by linking your checking account and your brokerage account. You can then pick where you want to invest and it will automatically make the purchases for you. Just set it and forget it.

(Of course, you may want to give it a glance once a year and make any necessary adjustments.)

I personally use Sharebuilder because there is no minimum and you can make instant transfers from ING Direct accounts.

4. Lifecycle Funds

Basically a fund compiled of several other funds. Lifecycle base their investments on your age and are automatically rearranged as you get older. For instance, you pick a fund designed for the year you are set to retire (in my case I use Retirement 2050 from T. Rowe Price). Since we are so young they would start off being very aggressive, meaning you have more money invested in stocks than bonds. As you age they are automatically accommodated to become more conservative.

For more information on why Lifecycle funds are awesome and why you should open one ASAP check out I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

5. Email

I personally love Gmail because I can do so many things in order to keep it simple and organized (and I love to organize). Gmail has several adds on that determine which emails are important for you based on what you read and reply to, the ability to use prewritten or “canned” messages, and automatically going to the next message as soon as you finish with a previous one. Basically, you can teach Gmail over time what messages actually matter. For a complete list of all the cool stuff you can do with Gmail check out Jenny Blake’s How I Start Organized Part Two (Hint: Like a Ninja).

I’ve also cut down to checking my email twice a day and took it off my Crackberry per the advice of Tim Ferriss. Honestly I thought I would have constant anxiety attacks not knowing what was in my inbox (mostly because I think every message is of the utmost importance and needs to be responded to immediately). So not the case. In fact, I think I feel more at peace now that I have dedicated times for email. I’ve also realized that twice a day is more than enough to respond to anything that is in there.

By implementing some of these strategies I have learned that while you can’t make time, you can certainly waste a hell of a lot less of it. Why waste your time checking your email constantly, writing out checks and spreadsheets, or trolling around Facebook aimlessly when you can automate whatever you need to do?

We’ve only got one life so we’d better do our best to make sure we’re living and not just working.

Next Step: Outsourcing.

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