Thursday, October 25, 2012

How to Have More Free Time in Your Day


How to Have More Free Time in Your Day


Do You Need More Free Time in Your Day?

Having more time in your day is easier than you think. Often, all it requires is making some tweaks in your everyday habits. 5 minutes gained here and there can make a big difference when added up over a week.

Be Smart With Your TV Viewing

Watch TV Online

If you’re not careful, watching TV can chew up a lot of hours in your week and can become a major cause of procrastination. Obviously the easiest thing to do would be to cut down your tv viewing. However, If you’re not prepared to do that, how about watching them online instead?

Most free-to-air television stations (in Australia anyway) stream shows online for around a month after it airs on TV. The greatest benefit of this is no ad breaks! So watching a drama which would ordinarily consume 1 hour of my time now only consumes 40 minutes! So if there are 20 episodes in a particular season I would have saved myself 4hrs of ad viewing!

Make Use of Ad Breaks

If you do end up watching TV shows with ads, make the most of those commercial breaks. You could do quick cleaning bursts around the house, or do some quick push-ups or stretches in the breaks. Maybe there's a a drawer in the house you've been meaning to spring clean. If you do a little bit (say 3-5 minutes worth) every ad break, by the end of the show you should be done.
Breaking down jobs into small manageable chunks makes it appear easier to achieve, so set aside a few of these jobs for your TV ad breaks to get them done effortlessly.

Don't Let Emails Take Over Your Life

I've had the same email address for years, and have signed up to so many sites; especially those annoying daily deals type sites that email you each day; that it was common to get hundreds of emails a week. These days my email is far better under control. My 'junk' email is down to a minimum and it's only promotional emails that I have approved to receive. More importantly, I no longer waste hours a week sifting through useless emails to find legitimate ones.
A lean email inbox is an easy way to get more time back in your day, as not only are you not having to sort through junk email, you are less likely to be distracted by junk emails which can easily lead to procrastination.
Unsubscribing to email lists is the easiest way to get control of your inbox. If that sounds overwhelming to you, try to unsubscribe to at least 5 lists a day. (The unsubscribe link is at the bottom of the email.)I did this daily for around a month. It's amazing to think that It took me about a month of unsubscribing to 5 email lists a day to get my inbox under control. That's around 150 email newsletters that was cluttering my inbox! I still get the odd junk email coming in, but it's much easier to control these days.

Additionally, have 1 email account for the sole purpose for joining sites and another email dedicated just for personal correspondence and important emails. You could also have a third email for work colleagues.


Source: Audible

Listen to Audio Books

I love learning about new things and further developing my skills. Whilst I do like to read a good book from time to time, I much prefer audio books and podcasts as it means I can multitask at the same time.

I get most of my audio books fromaudible, as they have really cheap introductory offers and free trials where they give you a free book. Most of the audiobooks has been narrated by the author themselves which is a nice bonus.

Track Your time

This exercise is not for the lighthearted. For a few days, a week if you can handle it, track how you spend every minute of every hour. Now I don't mean checking your watch constantly and monitoring minute by minute. rather, check in with yourself every half hour or hour (maybe use an alarm on your phone or clock) and write down how you just spent that last 30 minutes.
Yes this is a very tedious task, but often patterns emerge that reveal ways in which we could save more time. For example, your time diary could reveal that in the course of a week, you go to the store several 3 times a week for groceries. Condensing this into 1 trip would save you a few hours.
Often examining how we spend out time reveals that we are more productive at certain times of the day. Which would mean you could adjust your schedule to fit in with the way you work. I personally work better on tasks that require high attention and focus in the afternoons, so in the morning I usually schedule lighter tasks and errands that don't require much focus.

What Are You Going to Do With This Free Time?

What are you going to do with your free time? Spend more time with your family, learn a new skill? Even an extra 15 minutes a day can make a big change to your life. Imagine if everyday this year you spent 15 minutes learning a new skill or learning to play an instrument, by the end of the year, just imagine how much more skilled you would be in those areas!
Alternatively 15 minutes a day spent mediating will make your days more productive. It needn't be mediation in a traditional sense, it could be painting, listening to music or going for a walk. it could be anything that gives you a sense of peace.