Leave Your Cubicle Behind

In part one of our series on how to leave the cubicle, I talked about how you need to first figure out what you want. Determining your goals are important in figuring out what you need to do to escape the cubicle. In part 2 of our series, we will focus on tasks that everyone will need to do in order to free up time and escape from the cubicle. And that all can be boiled down to two words:

Digital Automation

In order to truly escape your cubicle, you need to automate much of your life. This can be through automatic bill payment or outsourcing through an assistant. However, no matter what you do, escaping from the cubicle will require a serious technological commitment. Since escaping the cubicle is really a metaphor for creating time, capitalization becomes a way to create that extra time. So for steps you will need to do is:

• Have a laptop- If you want to escape, you need to be mobile. Laptops will keep you mobile.
• Buy a back up hard drive- Now that your life is going on a computer, you want to make sure you have two copies of everything.
• Create a secure wireless system/firewall- With so much of your life online and digitized, you want to make sure that none of it gets stolen. Make sure you purchase a good security system for your wireless network and laptop.

Having this technology will allow you to have access to all the files and work you need because no matter what path you choose, escaping the cubicle requires moving some or all of your work online. Now that you have the hardware side taking care of, you need to begin to downsize your tasks.

The easiest task to automate is bill paying. Bill paying is a small task but it’s all those small tasks that turn into big time consuming task. Find a valuable credit card where you can get rewards and put all your bills onto that one card. In this current age, everyone allows for electronic payment. Paying one bill is a lot easier than paying many bills. Create an e-mail warning so that when the bill is due you don’t forget to pay it.

Secondly, if you haven’t done so, make sure you set up direct deposit. This ensure you no longer have to go to the bank and can simply free up that time.

Thirdly, and this is the most difficult task, create a list of all the things you do over the course of a week or two. Find out where you spend your time. I recommend creating a diary where you write down all your activities. You can’t free up your time if you don’t know what you are spending your time on.

After you have created such a list, look over it and circle all the errands. Trips to the mall, grocery store, post office, etc. These are the low hanging fruit. These types of tasks are easy to “digitize.” Trips to the post office can be eliminated by automating all your bills online. Trips to the mall can be eliminated by shopping online (which often gets you cheaper discounts). Moreover, many modern supermarket chains now offer home delivery services. Simply sign in and order your food.

Even if you already do this, the point here is to simply get an idea of what you do each week so you can do them online. It takes less time to go to Amazon.com than it does to drive to a mall (and it’s cheaper). Often we go out and do “errands” because that is what people do and it is just second nature to us. Escaping the cubicle requires us to question the normal routine and find a different way to do it.

This leads into my last point: you need to create a simpler life. Part of the reason why people are so burdened with the cubicle and so time poor is because they lead complex lives for no other reason than it’s the societal norm. When creating your time sheet, find out what you are spending time on that are not essential. Do you watch TV for 4 hrs a day? Are you spending 6 hrs in traffic for your commute? How much time do you “waste” each day not being productive or doing what you really desire to do? Keep a note of these things too because we’ll come back to these aspects of your time.

An important thing to remember about escaping the cubicle is that while there are steps to it, it is also a holistic approach that requires doing many things all at once. In the next part of the series, I’ll begin to talk about concrete steps on moving out of the cubicle by telling you how to get your boss to let you work remotely. We’ve begin to free up time out of the office, now lets free up time in the office to get out of the office.