I don’t have the time!
HERE’S HOW TO FIND AN EXTRA HOUR EACH DAY TO read, write, doodle, think, or enjoy your hobby.
This is the single complaint I hear most often. Well, here’s some potential solutions.
Tip: It’s a smorgasbord, so you won’t like them all.
- Get up an hour earlier each morning. Or just on one day per week. Try it. There’s a good chance you’ll like it.
- Go to bed an hour later. Some people sleep their lives away. Don’t burn the candle at both ends on the same day.
- Study a time management book, or take a T/M course. You only need one idea to be ahead. Ask your librarian to suggest a popular book.
- Forego lunch. Use that hour to read or study or exercise. Bring a cut lunch.
- Prioritize your tasks. Get the difficult ones done early in the day while you’re fresh.
- Skip reading the daily newspaper one day. Or TV. And ignore all those sport pages.
- Let your spouse attend to the kids’ needs for one day.
- Don’t answer the phone at home. Let someone take your telephone messages.
- Close your office door. You’ll bypass the ‘drop-in’ interruptions.
- Ask yourself: ‘Is my hobby too labour-intensive? Is it sapping my energy for more important things?’
- When you go places, walk 25% faster. Make people scamper to keep up. This gives you extra energy because your whole being moves at a faster clip.
- Move closer to where you work. Avoid the daily commute. Better still, work at home.
- Use your car audio player to listen to talking books on long journeys. In two hours you can enjoy a novel, read by a skilled voice actor.
- Keep a bottle of water by your desk, so you don’t need the trip to the canteen.
- Instead of writing your reports, letters, dictate them.
- Better still, get a secretary to write the letters to your general instruction.
- Work 10% faster. Whatever you need to decide, make the decision faster. Don’t worry, you’ll still be right just as often as before.
- Delegate more. Shunt those time consuming jobs to someone else.
- Skip spending two hours preparing a meal. Go for simpler recipes.
- Better still, support your neighbourhood restaurant’s home delivery service.
- Convert all your tasks to a system. Be like McDonalds. Train junior staff to follow the systems you’ve installed.
- If you have a long journey, hire a driver. Use the journey time to read or study.
- Make time to relax. A few moments sharpening your axe means you’ll cut wood faster. Learn to say “No”.
- Use the lift. Not as healthy but it’s quicker.
- Skip alcohol and drugs. They fuddle your mind so you take longer to do things.
- Plan your activities. A few minutes pre-planning will save re-doing your mistakes.
- Drink plain water. This lubricates your body and mind better than tea or coffee.
- Put football matches on video. Watch them using the fast forward switch. Skip scrums and lineouts and you’ll save 30 minutes per game.
- Skip cricket or baseball on TV. Settle for the daily highlights.
- Reduce the number of meetings you call or attend. Ask “Do I have to be there?” Settle for the minutes or meeting summary.
- Make your diary work for you. Use it as a planning tool, not just a record of where you’ve been.
- Hire an assistant. By divesting yourself of the menial tasks, you’ll earn more money by doing what you’re BEST at.
- Employ more staff. The same principle applies to all your key people. Make decisions at the lowest possible level.
- Streamline your working clothes. Get them ready the night before.
- Take a shorter shower.
- Don’t waste time cooing and playing with your pets.
- Write an email to the relative who wants to chat for hours on the phone.
- Stay healthy. Being sick takes too much valuable time.
- Take vitamin supplements, especially if you work long hours.
- Ask executives to give you their reports ‘on one A4 page’. This forces brevity and saves people compiling or reading the longer version.
- Use the electrical gadgets which save your time.
- At home, trade your easy but labour-intensive duties, like walking the dog, for short dirty jobs, like cleaning the toilet.
- Stick to three meals per day, thus saving afternoon teas etc.
- Use couriers to pick up and deliver things you’d have done yourself. Use retailers who deliver.
- Employ a housekeeper, gardener, cook, driver.
- Employ a researcher to do the prep work on your reports.
- Get someone to sift your incoming calls. Only take the important ones.
- Hire consultants to do in a fraction of the time what you’d slave over for hours, like programming your computer.
- Meditate, use self-hypnosis or cat nap to recharge your batteries. Sir Winston Churchill napped extensively. The siesta has merit.
- Visualise all the extra things you’ll be able to ACHIEVE with 1-2-3-4 extra hours this week.
…and make the effort to apply some ideas from this list.
-Brian Morris