How we went from a 5 day work week to a 4 day week
How we went from a 5 day work week to a 4 day week
“I’m so tired at the end of the day, all I want to do is watch TV.” Sound familiar? When you work 9-5, 5 days a week, it’s inevitable that your life will get consumed by work. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to go from working a 5 day work week to a 4 day week by implementing automation in your business.
We’ve worked out our productivity at Automation Made Simple to give us more time without increasing the amount of work we do. So as you can imagine, the hours are better, and the work-life balance is fantastic. But, the great thing is we still get our work done efficiently and effectively with a clear focus on what matters.
In this blog, we’re going to share with you how we’re using automation to reduce our workload and simplify the day-to-day running of our business. And even if your business can’t run at that level of efficiency, this blog is going to give you some tips and ideas which will help you become more efficient and more organised in your work.
What is Automation?
Imagine if you could automatically transfer data into any of your favourite tools. That could be Pipedrive, Google Sheets, or MailChimp even if they’re not designed to talk to each other. Well you can by using automation.
Zapier an online automation platform that’s available to everyone let’s you automate manual tasks. Say your data is in Gmail but you want it in Google Sheets – Zapier can help. Do you want to be notified about new leads in your CRM? You can do that with Zapier too.
Zapier bridges the gap between the platforms you use by using triggers (when this happens) and actions (do that). Find out more about Zapier in our blog here.
Mindset shift to move to a 4 day work week
It’s not just about having a four-day work week; it’s about realising the full potential of your work week and finding the best use of your most invaluable resource: time.
Understanding your time, setting goals for your ambitions, and making a business plan using systems will help you really understand how you spend each day. We can also take a hint from the “What If??” series, and learn to see what is possible if your work week was shorter.
Another great tip is to use Toggl or a similar time tracking tool to find out where your time is being spent. Do this for a few weeks to understand where your time goes. We think you’ll be surprised just how much time you’re spending on the laborious manual tasks in your business and not the stuff you’re good at, the money generating stuff.
What have we automated in our business and for our clients?
There’s so many opportunities to save time and money if you make time to embrace automation. We know you’re probably already time poor but just committing a bit of time will mean you’ll reap the rewards later.
Here’s just some of the stuff we’ve automated in our business or for our clients:
Sending email alerts if an automated is switched off
Finding or creating a contact in Hubspot when there is a new appointment booked in Acuity
Add CRM contacts to our Google calendar automatically
Create a project in Toggl when a new project is created in your CRM software (Airtable in our case).
Send weekly time reports to clients so they can see how their money has been spent
Create project notes and GDrive folders automatically
Create a Notion meeting item from a Google calendar meeting
Create a folder in G Drive when an opportunity is added to our CRM
Create Toggl project when a specific invoice is raised
Add signed proposals to an opportunity in a CRM
Add a new stripe customer to Mailerlite
Create a Trello board when a new contact is added to Hubspot
New customer added to tag in Mailerlite when a new client is created in Quickbooks
Send out PDF certificates and Zoom links automatically
That’s just a small snippet of what’s possible.
Makes you think doesn’t it?
Basically if you’re doing the same things over and over and the process never really changes you will be able to save time and automate it.
So ask yourself, why would you spend hours feeling completely overwhelmed by the day to day running of your business when all of this stuff can happen automatically while you’re doing the stuff you’re good at.
What do we do with the extra time?
Well both Jason and myself love the outdoors so more than likely you’ll find me up a hill in the peak district somewhere …
And Jason out on his bike around the vicinity of his home in Jakarta
So that’s our journey ….
from working a 5-day week to a 4-day week. Many people reading this will think ‘well, the 4-day week sounds like a dream come true, but it’s just not possible for me’. And you know what? That’s okay.
We’ve spent a lot of time and effort to get our work routine to the stage where it is today. But this is just our current approach – next week, there will be a new task or an opportunity for improvement that we hadn’t considered before. Our process might change again to accommodate these new elements. And that’s exactly how we want it to work: as a fluid system that evolves along with us as we continue to learn our exact needs and preferences.
If you’re ready to make the most of automation, reduce your work week or just work more efficiently so you never again lose your leads to the competition, you need to talk to us now. Contact us here for a free chat.
Ready to work with us?
1. Join our Facebook group NocodeVA where we share in-depth content and trainings on automation and the latest no-code tools
2. Book a Power Hour where we will hang out on Zoom, share screens, focus on your automation plan, problem solve any tech issues you have, map your workflows out or just brush up on your automation skills. The choice of what you spend the hour on is yours
3. Sign up for interactive Zapier or Airtable training. The training will help you to run your business better and faster.
4. Work with us on a 1:1 basis to create bespoke business automations specific to your workflows. Email us at info@amsuk.co
