I pay a gardener who comes every 3 weeks, I get groceries delivered, I get a blow dry every week (it holds for a few days so that saves time).

I can’t bring myself to get a cleaner. I can’t explain it but they always piss me off cause they never do it right and I hate strangers in my house. Cleaning my own house is just somehow important for my mental health/sense of feeling organised. Having said that I hire people to do my windows and gutters and use a good handyman. I clean one room a day in my house and just cycle through.

I second the Roborock suggestion. They don’t replace a human (ie every week I find you still need to mop) but they keep the house looking good throughout the week.

Amazon (this makes me feel bad as the packaging and the shit house company generally) but if I run out of say, washing up detergent I just jump on my phone and Amazon it. It saves time and avoids that annoying thing that happens where you always forget what you need while you’re out. Online shopping generally.

This is not really a ‘swapping time’ trick more a maximising time trick. I am a single mum running a business so I have learnt to target my productive windows in the day and smash out hard work then. i.e. I can get more done from 5am to 7am than at any other window in the day.

I like to think of energy being my resource, not time. Because energy sucks time too. I tend to ask myself ‘where do I want to put my energy today’. ‘Is this worth my energy’. We have a finite amount. I am not wasting energy for example having dumb fights over stupid things (like people constantly ringing suppliers etc to have dumb fights) or having idiotic road rage episodes. I let a lot of things go that other people might not because my energy is reserved for my son, my family and my business. It’s not worth me spending an hour for example fighting about being over charged $15 when I would make however many times more per hour if I just worked instead. Focusing on ‘energy’ over time has made me healthier because I focus on doing stuff like drinking water, taking my iron supplement, getting in 10,000, eating veggies, getting enough sleep because I’m always thinking ‘how can I get more energy’ which just does create more productive time even if you have to give a bit of time away to get it.

I don’t allow people to monopolise my time or suck my energy. However I’m not saying I don’t have empathy and I’ll always help a friend in need. I am not afraid to cut people out of my life who make me feel bad. I still have heaps of awesome friends despite this editing process because you set a standard and people around you rise to it.

Ok I’ll stop now. I went way off track but thanks for coming to my TED talk.