Are there a hundred different things you wish
you could do with your life someday anything from exercising to meditation or
yoga to writing that novel you always wished you could write to reading more to
relaxing and watching the sunrise? But perhaps you never have the time, like
most people.
The truth is, we all have the same amount of time, and its finite and in great
demand. But some of us have made the time for doing the things we love doing,
and others have allowed the constant demands and pressures and responsibilities
of life to dictate their days.
Its time to move from the second group back into the first. Reclaim your time.
Create the life you want and make the most of the free time you lay claim to.
Its not hard, though it does take a little bit of effort and diligence.
Not all of these will be applicable to your life choose the ones you can apply
and give them a try:
1) Take a time out. Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take
a good look at your life. You need to block off at least an hour. Several hours
or half a day is better. A whole day would be awesome. A weekend would be even
more ideal, though not necessary practical for many folks. With this block of
time, take a look at your life with some perspective. Is it what youve always
wanted? How would you get to where youve always wanted to be? What do you enjoy
doing, but dont have enough time to do? What things actually fill up your day?
Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time? Well look at
some of these things in the following items, but it starts with taking a time
out to think and plan.
2) Find your essentials. What is it that you love to do? Make a short list of
4-5 things. These are the things you want to make room for.
3) Find your time-wasters. What do you spend a lot of your time on that isnt on
your essential list? Take a close look at these things and really think about
whether theyre necessary, or if there are ways to reduce, minimize or eliminate
these things. Sometimes you do things because you assume theyre necessary, but
if you give it some thought you can find ways to drop them from your life.
Figure out what you do simply to waste time maybe surfing certain sites,
watching TV, talking a lot at the water cooler, etc. Youre going to want to
minimize these time-wasters to make room for the more important stuff, the
stuff that makes you happy and that you love to do.
4) Schedule the time. As you sit down and think about your life and what you
want to do, versus what you actually do, you will be looking at ways to free up
time. Its crucial that you take a blank weekly schedule (you can just write it
out on a piece of paper, or use your calendar) and assign blocks for the things
you love the stuff on your essentials list. If you want to exercise, for
example, when will you do it? Put the blocks of time on your schedule, and make
these blocks the most important appointments of your week. Schedule the rest of
your life around these blocks.
5) Consolidate. There are many things you do, scattered throughout your day or
your week, that you might be able to consolidate in order to save time. A good
example is errands instead of running one or two a day, do them all in one day
to save time and gas. Another example is email, or any kind of communication
batch process your email instead of checking and reading and responding
throughout the day. Same thing with meetings, paperwork, anything that you do
regularly.
6) Cut out meetings. This isnt possible for everyone, but in my experience
meetings take up a lot of time to get across a little information, or to make
easy decisions that could be made via email or phone. As much as you can,
minimize the number of meetings you hold and attend. In some cases this might
mean talking to your boss and telling her that you have other priorities, and
asking to be excused. In other cases this might mean asking the people holding
the meeting if you can get the info in other ways. If so, youve saved yourself
an hour or so per meeting (sometimes more).
7) De clutter your schedule. If you have a heavily packed schedule, full of
meetings and errands and tasks and projects and appointments, youre going to
want to weed it out so that its not so jam-packed. 8) Find the stuff thats not
so essential and cancel them. Postpone other stuff. Leave big blank spaces in
your schedule.
9) Re-think your routine. Often we get stuck in a routine thats anything but
what we really want our days to be like. Is there a better way of doing things?
Youre the creator of your life make a new routine thats more pleasant, more
optimal, more filled with things you love.
10) Cut back on email. I mentioned email in an earlier point above, regarding
consolidating, but its such a major part of most peoples lives that it deserves
special attention. How often do you check email?
How much time do you spend composing emails? If you spend a major part of your
work day on email, as many people do (and as I once did), you can free up a lot
of time by reducing the time you spend in email. Now, this wont work for
everyone, but it can work for many people: choose 2-3 key times during the day
to process your inbox to empty, and keep your responses to 5 sentences.
11) Learn to say no. If you say yes to every request, you will never have any
free time. Get super protective about your time, and say no to everything but
the essential requests.
12)Keep your list to 3. When you make out your daily to-do list, just list the
three Most Important Tasks you want to accomplish today. Dont make a laundry
list of tasks, or youll fill up all your free time. By
keeping your task list small, but populated only by important tasks, you ensure
that you are getting the important stuff done but not overloading yourself.
13) Do your Biggest Rock first. Of the three Most Important Tasks you choose
for the day, pick the biggest one, or the one youre dreading most, and do that
first. Otherwise youll put that off as much as possible and fill your day with
less important things. Dont allow yourself to check email until that Big Rock
is taken care of. It starts your day with a sense of major accomplishment, and
leaves you with a lot of free time the rest of the day, because the most
important thing is already done.
14) Delegate. If you have subordinates or coworkers who can do a task or
project, try to delegate it. Dont feel like you need to do everything yourself.
If necessary, spend a little time training the person to whom youre delegating
the task, but that little time spent training will pay off in a lot of time
saved later. Delegating allows you to focus on the core tasks and projects you
should be focusing on.
15) Cut out distractions. What is there around your workspace that distracts
you from the task at hand? Sometimes its visual clutter, or papers lying around
that call for your attention and action, or email or IM notifiers on your
computer that pop up at the wrong time, or the phone, or coworkers. See if you
can eliminate as many of these as possible the more you can focus, the more
effective youll be and the less time youll waste. That equals time saved for
the good stuff.
16) Disconnect. The biggest of distractions, for most people, is the Internet.
My most productive times are when Im disconnected from the grid. Now, Im not
saying you need to be disconnected all the time, but if you really want to be
able to effectively complete tasks, disconnect your Internet so you can really
focus. Set certain times of the day for connectivity, and only connect during
those periods.
17) Outsource. If you cant delegate, see if you can outsource. With the
Internet, we can connect with people from all over the world. Ive outsourced
many things, from small tasks to checking email to legal work to design and
editing work and more. That allows me to focus on the things Im best at, the
things I love doing, and saves me a lot of time.
18) Make use of your mornings. I find that mornings are the absolute best times
to schedule the things I really want to do. I run, read and write in the
mornings three of the four things on my Essentials List (spending time with
family is the other thing on the list). Mornings are great because your day
hasnt been filled with a bunch of unscheduled, demanding, last-minute tasks
that will push back those Essentials. For example, if you schedule something
for late afternoon, by the time late afternoon rolls around, you might have a
dozen other things newly added to your to-do list, and youll put off that
late-afternoon Essential. Instead, schedule it for the morning, and itll rarely
(if ever) get pushed back.
19) The Golden Right-after-work Time. Other than mornings, I find the time just
after work to be an incredible time for doing Essential things. Exercise, for
example, is great in the 5-oclock hour, as is spending time with family, or
doing anything else relaxing.
20) Your evenings. The time before you go to bed is also golden, as it exists
every single day, and its usually completely yours to schedule. What do you
want to do with this time? Read? Spend time with your kids? Work on a hobby
youre passionate about? Take advantage of this time.
Lunch breaks. If the three golden times mentioned above dont work for you,
lunch breaks are another good opportunity to schedule things. Some people like
to exercise, or to take quiet times, during their lunch breaks. Others use this
time to work on an important personal goal or project.
Regards
Ankush D Shilimkar
