Whitson Gordon

What if you were a wizard that could bend the entire world to your will? chores would do themselves, bills would pay on time, and your appliances would obey your every thought. Well, you can’t do that exactly, but with a bit of ingenuity, you can automate a lot of your life so you don’t have to trudge through the boring stuff. Here are ten things you can automate right now.

10. Maintain Your computer Without the Work

No one likes to sit around and clean up their computer, but it’s something that has to get done. We’ve talked about what kind of maintenance you need to do on your Windows PC and Mac, and much of that you can automate—like running CCleaner on a schedule. You should also set up an automated backup program, so you never lose your data. Set it up once, and forget it.

9. Make Your Bills Pay Themselves

Paying bills and managing your budget sucks. Luckily, we live in an age where computers can do a lot of the work for us. Have your bills automatically pay themselves online, and set up an automatic budget that’s easy to stick to with Mint. check out our guide to automating your finances for more ideas, and be sure to check out when you shouldn’t automate your finances, too.

8. Create a Diet Without Thinking

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or just take the stress out of planning and cooking, you can automate what you eat with a number of tools. Gather all your recipes up in one place and plan your weekly meals ahead of time for stress-free Shopping and cooking. If you need to pay closer attention to your diet (like if you’re trying to lose weight), try a service like Eat This Much or Swole.me, which will plan your diet for you based on your goals. That way, you can keep an eye on what you eat and stay on track with minimal effort.

7. organize Important Documents and Files

We’ve all got stacks of papers lying around, not to mention a hard drive full of unorganized files. Luckily, you can automate just about anything with those files using a few tools. First, if you’re having trouble organizing that paper, go paperless so you can organize it digitally—it won’t take you much time. Ditch hard drive clutter by organizing your Home folder automatically. For everything else, you can use Actions on Windows or Automator on the Mac—they’ll let you automatically rename a bunch of files, crop a large number of images, or even extract text from a bunch of PDF files. Anything you can imagine, you can probably do—heck, I even put together a service that syncs iTunes with nearly any device.

6. Do Away with Shopping and Get Automatic Discounts

Whether you’re grocery shopping or trekking yourself to Home Depot, you can make shopping a lot easier by…well, not doing it. For example, Amazon Subscribe & Save will automatically send you everything you need on a schedule, and at a nice discount—heck, you can even use it to automate office lunches. Don’t like grocery shopping? Get what you can delivered, and plan your way through the store for the few things you can’t. While you’re at it, be sure to automate all your coupons so you don’t have to search for discounts—you’ll just get them automatically.

5. Make Your phone Read Your Mind

Smartphones can be useful, but sometimes it feels like it takes forever to perform the simplest of tasks. With a few tools, you can essentially make your phone read your mind, performing tasks in response to related actions. For example, you could tell your phone to automatically dim your screen at night, or go into silent mode when you put it face down. Android users should check out Tasker, while iPhone users will need to jailbreak and try out some of these tools to make it happen.

4. Integrate Your Favorite Apps and web Services

You probably have a few apps and tools that you absolutely couldn’t live without—like Dropbox, Gmail, a to-do list, or something else. That’s great, but you can make those services even better by automating tasks—and even making them talk to each other—with If This Then That, also known as IFTTT. Make job searches easier, save articles for later, fix Instagram pictures on Twitter, add to-dos with Siri, make app deals last forever, archive your life, get digital doubles of your photos, and much much more. There’s barely a limit to what it can do.

3. download Anything Without Even Searching for It

The days of combing the net for good downloads is over. With a small collection of programs, you can have your computer automatically search for, download, and organize nearly any type of file in existence. You can even tell it the quality of videos you want to download, the file format of the music you want, or what program you want to use to download it. It takes a little work to set up, but you’ll never have to search for a file on the web again.

2. Put Your Chores on autopilot

Doing chores is boring, so why waste time doing them when you can put them on autopilot? You can’t make your broom come alive and clean the room for you (unless you’re Merlin), but you can create a schedule that breaks everything up into almost unnoticeable chunks. Do your cleaning in regular short bursts, speed up your laundry, and even maintain your home without batting an eyelash. It isn’t true automation, but it’ll sure feel like it when you have all that extra time in your day.photo by Maarten Takens.

1. Automate Everything In Your Home

Ever wish you could change the thermostat without getting up, or unlock your door without fumbling with your keys? Home automation can make it happen. We’ve shared tons of tricks over the years, from transforming your digs into a home of the future, controlling everything with Siri, turning stuff off with your phone, or even watering the plants and feeding the cat. Check out all our posts on home automation for even more ideas—the sky’s the limit!{Source lifehacker top 10}

Why is this? Well, that marbling is responsible for both moisture and that beefy flavor:

As well-marbled meat cooks, the fat will slowly melt, adding juiciness built right into the meat. Non-marbled meat might have plenty of fat on the exterior, but it doesn’t enhance the steak in the same way. Sort of like the difference between drinking a glass of chocolate milk or drinking the milk then shooting the chocolate syrup.

Flavorwise, almost all of the compounds our tongues sense that give us the thought “ooh, that’s beefy” are found in the fat. In fact, if you take the fat out of a piece of beef and replace it with lamb fat, it’ll taste like lamb. Want chicken-flavored beef? Cook lean beef in chicken fat.

J. Kenji López-Alt also offers 10 Other tips for cooking a perfect steak, particularly on the grill. Many of the tips we’ve mentioned before, such as turning the meat often for more even cooking and to reduce cooking time, salting your steak well in advance, and letting that steak rest.

Go bookmark the article for future reference this grilling season.

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1. Assemble marinade by combining lime zest, lime juice, olive oil, honey, salt, pepper, and garlic powder in a gallon-sized zip-top bag or shallow container with a lid. Add fish and marinate in the refrigerator anywhere from 30 minutes up to 24 hours*
2. When ready to cook, combine flour with a pinch of salt and pepper on a plate. Remove each fish fillet from the marinade and dredge lightly with the flour on both sides (just a light, light coating).
3. heat 1-2 Tbsp olive oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Cook fillets 2 at a time for 3-4 minutes per side or until opaque and browned (this works best if you don’t disturb the fish much while letting it cook). Add additional oil to the pan if necessary.
4. While tilapia is cooking, make honey-lime sauce by pouring leftover marinade into a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil 5-6 minutes until slightly reduced.
5. To serve, break fish into large pieces and serve in tortillas with honey-lime sauce, lettuce and other favorite toppings.

Siemens’ full-surface induction cooktop allows up to four pieces of cookware to be placed anywhere on its surface