From the moment you wake up until the time you lay your head down on your pillow at night, you’ll undoubtedly spend much of your waking hours trying to complete as many tasks on your to-do list as possible.

As a business leader, it’s your job to make things happen – whether that’s working on ways to grow your business or helping your teams be more productive. Moreover, you’ll also have to spare time for your personal life.

Most people like you try to discover ways of managing their time more effectively, and while you may have success to some degree, you can’t help but wonder if there are better approaches you can consider for your daily schedules.

Take a look at the following 15 ways you can save time every day. Some you may already know, while others might appear radical at first. But they all share the same common goal – and that’s to give you more time during your day:

1. Use Video Conferencing Tools

It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic shifted how businesses communicated. With face-to-face meetings made impossible, firms resorted to using video conferencing technology like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Today, businesses still rely on video conferencing tools to communicate internally and externally – tools that can save you time on travelling and correspondence.

Video calls with customers, other business site and suppliers mean you will save time out of your busy day traveling between places. You can even use your mobile device for such calls – perfect if you’re not in the office on a particular day.

2. Let AI Help You Optimise

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past few years, you’ll know that AI (artificial intelligence) is making inroads into how any business operates today. Forward-thinking firms are already utilising AI for many reasons to save time, money and hassle.

One way you can take advantage of AI to help you save time each day is by streamlining certain decision-making processes:

• Chatbots like LivePerson’s Bella boast conversational generative chat features, meaning they can deal with your customers online without you needing to answer commonly asked questions
• Cold email tools like Smartwriter.ai curate personalised emails without you wasting time researching and emailing each recipient individually

3. Site Tours With A VR Headset

A time-consuming task that many business leaders typically deal with is site tours. For example, they might need to make a whole trip down to survey a new store or office and approve its design and layout before it can get used.

One hack for avoiding time wasted on this is taking these tours in VR (virtual reality. A professional film company films each room or area with 360-degree equipment, which can then get viewed with a VR headset.

4. Optimise Sleeping Habits

While it would be best to get a restful night’s sleep every evening, many business owners often have unpredictable schedules and late nights or consistently interrupted sleep.

Consider using sleep tracking tools to help you learn more about your sleeping habits and address any core issues. Doing so will ensure your body is fighting fit when you wake up the next morning, plus you’ll feel alert and ready to tackle the day’s proceedings.

You should also take some simple steps to improve your sleep, such as avoiding screen time an hour before bed or meditating for 30 minutes to help you relax.

5. Invest in A Chauffeur

The downside to driving is the perennial burden of finding parking. The walk from the car itself can vary from can just a few feet to a 10 minute walk or more.

If you use a company like Daisy Limo Car Service, you could have a chauffeur drive you directly to any destination without worrying about parking or walking distances. 

Moreover, you can catch up on some work during each journey instead of concentrating on the road.

6. Charter Private Jets For Flights

For those that travel often for their business, queuing in airport terminals and boarding planes can be time consuming and stressful experiences.

In that case, chartering private jets might make more sense for you. Private jets are less expensive than you might think — especially if you share your plane with other business leaders heading to the same destination.

Look at websites like Air Partner to learn how you can save time and costs in your international correspondences.

7. Learn Speed Reading

A lot of time gets spent reading emails, documents and other literature. Reading is a time-consuming exercise and one that you probably hate doing when you’ve got a packed schedule.

How can we optimise this inevitable task? The answer is simple: learning how to speed read. Various methods can help you absorb information faster by cutting out certain words or phrases, resulting in a brief synopsis of all text in front of you.

You can even use text-to-speech tools on your computer or mobile devices to read information aloud while focusing on other tasks.

8. Hire An On-Demand Stylist

Do you hate choosing outfits for the work week? Does it take lots of time to select the right combinations you feel comfortable and confident in?

If the answer to both questions is yes, you should consider hiring an on-demand stylist. Put simply, on-demand stylists help their clients define their personal style and select appropriate clothing and accessory combinations. Some stylists can even assist with bringing you clothing should you be far from home and not have the correct attire.

9. Hire An Assistant

You want to get down to business and not waste time organising your daily to-do lists. Phoning and emailing people, booking travel arrangements and scheduling meetings takes up valuable time.

Consider hiring a personal assistant to manage such tasks for you. You could hire someone who works with you in the same office or a virtual assistant who can take care of things remotely.

Whether you’re head of a large corporation or a sole proprietor, you can get the admin help you need each day without breaking your staffing budget.

10. Activate Voice Assistant On Your Devices

Of course, personal assistants don’t have to be humans to be of use to you. It’s also possible to have a computer-based assistant take care of specific tasks so you can spend more time focused on high-priority ones.

All modern desktop and mobile operating systems come with built-in voice assistants that can help you.

For example, you can use Cortana on Windows PCs and laptops. Voice prompts mean you can tell your computer assistant to open files, perform tasks on the Internet or even conduct research when you’re not at your desk.

11. Meal Delivery Services

Thinking about preparing meals for work or when you get home can be stressful. You don’t want to rely on take-out food daily, but you haven’t the time or sometimes energy to prepare and cook wholesome meals from scratch. One solution is meal delivery services.

These companies will produce meals to your specifications, made by qualified and award-winning chefs. Meals are prepared and delivered to you or a group of people at any venue you host. It’s a far better idea than, say, using a takeout app and getting fast food for convenience’s sake.

12. Concierge Services

Concierge services provide personalised assistance to people in various ways. For example, hotels offer concierge services that can book transport, clean your clothing and make restaurant reservations on your behalf.

They are time-saving services that all business leaders should use and you’ll likely find them offered by the companies and facilities you use most often.

13. Convert to A Paperless Office

It’s the digital age, and your business should embrace it by adopting a “paperless office.” Any incoming documents can get scanned at the point of arrival and forwarded or filed to the correct recipient or destination in your company.

Moreover, digital documents are easier to organise, find and keep safe than their traditional printed counterparts.

14. Set Up Effective Email Filtering

Do you receive tens or even hundreds of emails each day? If so, use your email client’s advanced filtering options. You can file incoming emails according to sender, subject title, message content or even the time of receipt and action them where appropriate.

15. Cloud Computing

Lastly, your business should adopt cloud computing solutions if it hasn’t already done so. Cloud computing will help you and your colleagues save time, especially when you must all work on projects from remote locations.

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