How many times have you heard people exclaim, “there is not enough time in the day!” or some other cop out for not having done what they were supposed to? I’m guessing it’s plenty. What about in your own life? Are there things you should be doing that you just don’t have the time to achieve? If you’ve never fallen victim to time then you’re obviously some sort of productivity guru and should probably be teaching me a thing or two.
For everyone else, we have to try and make time for the things we want to achieve.
Now unless your name is Hiro Nakamura, then there’s no possibility of bending the fabrics of time and space in order to get more done (but it would be really cool if we could!). For mere mortals, we just have to figure out a way to organise our day in a way that makes it more conducive towards achieving our goals.
We all have a list of things we want to see/do/create/complete/change/try/enjoy in 2010. There is goal setting a-plenty all over the world. Fitting it all in is difficult and come February or March, stuff we thought we would have achieved by now hasn’t materialised and, if you’re anything like me, you’re still sat there reading countless blog posts of others instead of actioning your most important tasks.
Here is a (brief) list of what I would like to achieve in the next 6 months:
- Improve my Spanish up to a decent, conversational level. (I let this slip at the back end of 2009)
- Build up my internet marketing businesses to a level where I’m earning around $1000 in extra income.
- Start practicing The Sedona Method to release my tension and live a happier, more fruitful life.
- Learn how to look after a child. (Come March 8th, I’ll be getting hands-on experience!)
- Man up, brave the cold, and get back into shape!
- Live a more frugal life by binning all the junk I don’t use and keeping only the belongings that will enhance my life.
Getting all of this done while still working at a full-time job is going to be difficult. Particularly learning Spanish and improving my internet marketing businesses.
Enough with the small-talk… how do you make more time?
I’m a simple creature. If you’re looking for an elaborate time management system that tracks every little thing you do down the most mundane task of all (namely, a lavatory break) then you’re out of luck. The more I develop and grow as a person, the more I understand that simplicity is our greatest strength.
With than in mind, here is what I intend to do to create more time for myself:
- The early bird gets the worm. I’ve started setting my alarm clock earlier and earlier. The end goal is to get up at 5am every day to focus on article writing and exercising. The benefits of rising early have been touted by health experts for as long as I’ve had hot dinners but, for me, this simple task has improved my energy levels, given me a renewed sense of clarity, boosted my focus on the tasks at hand and allowed me to live in the moment. I love the quiet time that comes with an early rise. I have to make this work while I can because once my daughter arrives, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it won’t be quite so peaceful and serene! If you want to try this yourself, it’s only as hard as you make it. Don’t think about it. Set your alarm as early as you can and when it goes off, get up immediately. I literally leap out of bed each morning now the moment my alarm goes off. I don’t have time to think about it which means I never hit snooze.
Total time made: 2 hours
- Use time wisely, you must. A lot of time is wasted doing activities that serve no other purpose than to waste away at our grey matter. Traveling, commuting, working out. Your mind switches off during these activities. During my hour-a-day commute I’ll be using the Michel Thomas audio Spanish course. I remember listening to Coffee Break Spanish on the bus and getting some very strange looks as I repeated the phrases. “¡Hoy hace frio, pero mañana, va a hacer….muy frio!” I can’t wait to freak out some more commuters with my newly found linguistic skills! You can listen to podcasts on any number of topics from Spanish to internet business to train spotting! Check out iTunes for plenty of great learning materials.
Total time made: 1 hour
- Lunch is not just for food. At my place of work, it’s very hard to be productive on my lunch break. I work with a bunch of guys and, against my better judgment, I took in my XBox 360 when I bought a Playstation 3 (both of which I hardly ever use). It has now become a part of the work culture that whoever is on lunch together plays FIFA 10 (a soccer game). I’ve started to slowly change my lunch schedule to allow others to play instead. My intention is to use my lunch hour not only to refuel my under-developed body, but to brainstorm and generate article ideas, flesh out previous ideas and come up with new markets to explore in my internet marketing business. Out of everything, this will be the hardest task to complete, simply because of the culture of the company.
Total time made: 45 minutes (I still need to eat!)
- One in the evening. When you get home from work after a long and arduous day (note: I have the most cushy job ever and still feel this way) the last thing you want to do is more work. Train yourself to work for just one hour in the evening on your goals. It could be language learning, playing an instrument, niche market research, article writing or any other task that is important to you. If possible do it away from family members and other distractions like a TV. When I get home I’ll be focusing on articles for my businesses and this blog. Most of which will have been generated or written during my now more productive lunch hour.
Total time made: 1 hour
- Zzzzzzz. I’ll be going to bed relatively early. The aim is to be in bed at 10pm, reading some non-fiction. Usually in the form of an Andy McNab or Chris Ryan novel. I think that early nights are essential for productivity and getting up early pretty much depends on going to bed sooner. After a couple of days this just falls into place and you get tired earlier anyway. I know people like Ross Enamait can quite happily survive on 5 hours of sleep or less, but I’ll be aiming for 7 hours.
Total time made: 0 (but this allows you to perform at your best each day, and so is invaluable)
Total time made each day: 4 hours & 45 minutes
If you want to make time for achieving goals then you simply have to make a few sacrifices. Simple, actionable steps will give you the most bang for your buck and I firmly believe that everyone is capable of doing exactly what I have outlined above.
What could you do with an extra 4 hours and 45 minutes working on your business or new language?
It’s not difficult, it’s just uncomfortable. Get out of your comfort zone and focus on making time where you can and you’ll see your dreams become a reality right in front of your eyes.
Now, in the interests of learning, I’d be really intrigued to know what you are doing right now to make more time and achieve your goals? Give me your thoughts in the comments!
great post Ian!
Personally, I found I got more time by figuring out that I don’t work as well during the day as I do in the evening. So I switched how I sleep a little and instantly found myself with a lot more time.
Awesome point! Figuring out when you’re most productive is a fantastic tip and not something that a lot of people look into. I’m really great at thinking clearly and writing a lot in the early morning, and much less productive in the evenings. This is why I get up at 5.00-5.30am to work.
It’s trial and error to discover when you perform at your peak. Thanks for bringing that up, Anthony!
P.S. Thanks for the email, I’ll read through and apply the practices, try and make some money from it and post a review up here with my conclusions.
Sure found myself there.. From the 5 points you mention, I’ve been doing my best to implement numbers 2 and 4. Still got to work much harder on 1,3 & 5. Quick comments on each:
“The early bird gets the worm”
So true. And a problem for a “night owl” like me. Normally I tend to stay up late (before midnight on working days) and wake at 8:00am. I’m currently experimenting with bedtime 23:00 – wake 7:00. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. I must get at least 7:30hrs of sleep. If not, the next day is usually horrible (can’t get anything done). Still have to work on this!
“Use time wisely, you must”
I try to constantly ask myself: “am I currently doing something that furthers some of my goals?” If not, “stop procrastinating and refocus!”.
“Lunch is not just for food”
This is a hard one. Like Keith Ferrazzi says, “Never eat alone”. More than 90% of the times I go to lunch, I eat in a company of other people. Usually it’s the team I’m working with and the talk is anything but “productive”. But it’s ok. I don’t mind if my luch hour (usually 15-25mins) is completely slack time. I know I work hard before and after that.
“One in the evening”
This resonates well with me. I use 1-2 hours everyday to work on my goals. This is where I almost never slack. I only skip my “hustle time” if I’m extremely tired or have somewhere I need to be (meetings, sports exercise sessions, time with my gf, friends birthdays, etc.). I LOVE this time of my day!
“Zzzzzzz”
Everyone has to sleep. Right? I know I do. 6hrs just won’t cut it. Ideal amount of sleep for me is 8hrs. Tested it, know it! Got to work on the bedtime though.. I should get my act together here and start going to bed more early. Improvement definately needed. I like to keep my bedtime reads relatively light. Nothing too heavy stuff like lots of figurs and charts. I favor inspirational books as my “bedtime stories”. Gives me a boost for the next day also!
Good tips Ian! Would love to throw in a few time savers of my own, but it’s 0:35am.. way past my bedtime already! One tip before I fall asleep: Buy a car. I know I got over 1h extra per day when I changed from citybus to my own car! This won’t work with everyone of course. Only if your workplace is relatively far. Now I’m off to bed. Good night!
Hey, Juha! Glad to see you found your way over here.
Looks like you’re really trying to get more time for doing great things in your life. I can dig that!
I’m actually in the process of selling a car (one year of maternity pay for my girlfriend means a little bit of frugality in our household!) but what I lose in time spent traveling to work on the bus, I get back in fuel savings and parking fees. Plus, I use the time on the bus to continue my Spanish studies and I love it so much I wouldn’t want to cut my commute time down!
Night, dude. Please come back again and comment again soon (if you’re not too busy running through the snow a la Rocky IV!).
Nice post Ian!
I try to maximise the downtime I get like during lunch, waiting for appointments and travelling. I find that I can get a great deal done in these times.
Another one for me is minimising distractions when I’m trying to work. Being a massive geek, the temptation to have 100 tabs opened up on my browser while I’m working is huge, so eliminating my self imposed distractions can save me a lot of time that I can use later for achieving my goals.
I actually wrote about a post 4 productivity hacks I use to free up more time during the day
Sorry for the shamless plug by the way…
Yeah, minimising distractions is something we all have to work at in our own way. I’m pretty good with it until I’ve a free five minutes. My brain guides me to Facebook and Twitter almost on autopilot and I end up there for 30 minutes or more!
How dare you post a valuable link with good tips on productivity on my blog! It’s just not cool, Ben….
Great post. Working in the evening after work is the worst thing for me. It’s better in my opinion to go to bed 2 hours earlier and get up accordingly (as you said in another tip), so the brain is refreshed and ready to do its creative work.
How intelligent to make out a list of things to see areas of life where time could be spent more wisely. I might have to do this myself so I can focus on the things in life I want more instead of dwelling on things I can not control.
The reality is that people who are organized get more done then people who are not.
Thanks for the insight!
Thanks for the comment, Shelly. Although I’m not a fan of organising your life to the point of total monotony I can agree that organised people definitely get more done.
I hope you’ll come back and let us know how you got on with looking at areas of your own life where time could be better spent.
Ian
I struggled to understand people who say to me ..I don’t have time.. It’s one thing in life we all share equally (24 hrs each). I sometimes think it’s just a habit for these people .I may well be wrong cuz it could also be bad time management. We all have plenty of dead time which could make use of wisely … I am so happy you have written about TIME and have gladly shared this post.. Great blog …. it’s my first time here.
Yep, I can agree that we do indeed have just 24 hours each per day. Hopefully, if you learn to utilise the dead time more wisely then you will get much more into your time that others who waste it by daydreaming their way through life!
Thanks for reading and glad you’re here!
Thanks for the RT on my Na’vi article! You may also be interested in what I wrote about how to make time if you are too busy, which definitely goes along the lines of this post!
What I mentioned there for example is that you can “study” in wasted waiting time; waiting for the bus (as well as on the bus), waiting in a supermarket line, or in an elevator. These are all 20 second – 2 minute slots but can add up to a lot of time if you utilise them with a book in your pocket you can slap out to study short factoids. (vocabulary for example)
Something I didn’t mention on the article that I’ll go into later on my blog is biphasic sleep. You may “need” 7 hours, but you can drastically reduce that if you have a 15 minute nap in the afternoon. At your place of work if you find a quiet room (like a conference room not used during lunch) and put on a facemask and earplugs you can get a power nap (it takes some getting used to; took me about a week of failed attempts). If you get REM sleep in that 15 minutes (which I always do now) then it’s actually two hours that you can take off the night session. I used to “need” 8-9 hours sleep a day, but I’m totally rested on 5 nowadays.
I know your lunchbreak is short, but 15-20 minutes is well worth it. At the end of the siesta you are completely rejuvinated and way more energetic for the afternoon than your coworkers. Our bodies have a natural lull around 2pm, with a reduction in temperature and with some blood from our brains going to our stomach for digestion. It’s our least productive time, but after a siesta it becomes your most productive time of the day
Hey Benny, great to have you comment here since I’ve been following you blog for a while.
You make some great points and I’ve been meaning to try out napping as a way of cutting down nighttime sleep. Problem is that it’s hard for me to nap at work because there is only one room at work and people are constantly in and out of it.
Love the 20 second to 2 minute slots of learning idea too! Will definitely put that to use for my Spanish. Out of curiosity, just how many languages do you speak??
Wow, it always is a cool thing to see how much time can truly be saved when added up each day and with enough progress you could build up something amazing over time.
Kinda like interest in the bank… It just takes a little bit and then before you know it you have a good size amount put back.
With an extra 4 hours & 45 minutes I could do quite a lot actually. I feel we all could and we all should strive each day for something like this… Even if not this exactly, just something similar to work around our own days and schedules.
Great article!
You can easily gain more time back than this too by cutting out TV and computer games and even get 30 minutes or more a day by either preparing your food in advance or using foods that can be cooked in the microwave quickly. I eat oats in the morning, a tin of tuna and steamed microwave veg for lunch and rice and chicken for dinner. Easy to cook in advance or microwave very quickly.
Obviously I do have a good, cooked meal every now and then, but most of the time I eat pretty minimally.
As long as you’re staying healthy and making the most of your time, you’re doing something right.
I’m all over the place with this but actually have quite a bit of time to make things happen.