You can easily find yourself busy at work and behind on your to do list at home. Unfortunately for most, there just isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. However, by closely examining your current schedule and your priorities, you can start to make changes to your routine in order to free up more time in your day.
Remove or Consolidate Activities That Take Up Most of Your Time
Consider rethinking the way you approach to do’s or activities that take up a large part of your day. Some examples include: time spent on your phone or the Internet, watching TV, checking email, and completing household chores.
Social media and TV
Checking Instagram, watching Netflix, or surfing the Internet is subjective and personal in terms of the value it provides. But it’s safe to assume that most of us are guilty of vegging out from time to time. In an effort to avoid wasting time, consider cutting your Internet and entertainment time in half or eliminating certain things (such as TV) altogether. There are even helpful apps and site blockers to help you set limits and kick the habit! In addition to helping gain more hours in your day, saying sayonara to excessive social media or TV watching may even make you healthier.
Repetitive Work Tasks
It’s easy to get caught up with work-related tasks, especially email. By dedicating certain times of the day to clear your inbox and refraining from checking it on your phone every time you receive an email, you should start to notice that you are wasting less time. A good place to start? Clear your email once in the morning and once around 2pm so your colleagues have time to take action on your responses.
Chores and errands
Maintaining a clean and functional house or apartment isn’t easy. There are just some chores you cannot skip such as washing the dishes and doing your laundry. By outsourcing household chores you will easily start to find more time in your daily schedule. Luckily for you, Rinse has got your dry cleaning and laundry covered, Handy connects you with local housekeepers and Taskrabbit is there to help you with everything else. It’s up to you to decide how valuable your time is, but services like these can give you some (or a lot) of it back if you’re willing to pay for some help!
Start Using Your Spare Time More Wisely
When you start to breakdown your day you’ll begin to notice periods of time that are not being utilized properly. We suggest thinking of ways to fill your downtime with more important things you may not have time for right now. Some of our suggestions include reading, learning, creating.
Instead of scrolling through your newsfeeds keep a book (or Kindle book) with you at all times. Rather than reaching for your phone to kill time try and sneak in some reading time here and there.
During your daily commute start listening to an audiobook or podcast. It’s a great way to learn something new or enjoy a form of entertainment without having to sacrifice anything else on schedule. Fill otherwise useless time with something constructive.
Making fundamental changes to your schedule and lifestyle will not be easy but if you’re serious about getting an extra 2 hours back in your day we highly suggest examining ways you can change.
By far the easiest way to get started is by outsourcing smaller tasks such as laundry or house cleaning. Alleviating these tasks from your to do list will accumulate and you’ll start to notice the difference rather quickly. In order to sustain the change, you’ll need to be disciplined in creating consistency and evaluate making bigger changes to your schedule such as waking up earlier, cutting back on or eliminating non-essential forms of entertainment, and being proactive rather than reactive.
