I have a confession to make: I’m obsessed with time. On my phone I track every minute of the day and how it is being used. I can even show you a spreadsheet with months of data where my time up to the minute.

For example, I can tell you that on average I sleep 7 hours and 14 minutes a day and I spend on average 87 minutes a week running errands. You might wonder why I’m doing this. The reason is that I want to be on the fast-track to success. One of the ways to reach my destination faster is by maximizing the time I have at my disposal. In other words, by time saving.

Over the months of tracking my time I wanted to figure out ways to shave minutes of certain low value activities so I could refocus that to more important matters. The list of time saving tips below is the one I’ve done myself to free up time, and I have redirected those minutes and hours to work and personal projects.

21 Time Saving Tips That Work

1. Check your smart phone in line – Waiting in line is a waste of time, so use this time to check your email, respond to text messages or participate on social media.

2. Automate your monthly expenses – Stop paying bills through the mail and switch to paying your expenses online. If you are already doing that, the next step is to automate your payments and set a time once a month to review all your monthly payments.

3. Maximize your commute times – Read a book, listen to audiobooks, call people, email or get other work done.

4. Eat your frog – The first thing you do in the morning is the task you dread the most. Brian Tracy coined this term and he got it from the saying: “If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long!” By doing the dreadful task first, the rest of the day is going to be easy in comparison.

5. Stop watching TV – Cut back on watching television and switch over to on-demand media. TV commercials provide little value and revolving your day around the TV’s schedule is an inefficient use of your time. You can still watch most your favorite shows on Hulu or Netflix, but at your own pace and time.

6. Learn keyboard shortcuts – Using the mouse can be slow for certain tasks which oftentimes can be done faster by keyboard shortcuts. Learn a couple keyboard shortcuts of your frequently used programs, like your browser, word processor and spreadsheet software.

7. Stick to 3 tasks – If you only had time for 3 tasks each day to complete to make your day worthwhile, what would they be? Answering this question forces you to prioritize so you spend time on important things and avoid working on things that have little importance.

8. Call people – Sometimes calling is much faster than sending emails. What can be said in less than a minute usually takes you a couple of minutes drafting an email, proof reading and then sending it.

9. Get a virtual assistant – Personal outsourcing is a great to save time because someone else can do the menial tasks you dread (and cheaper). This leaves you with more time for leisure or to do more high value activities. Examples of tasks you can outsource is online research and data entry.

10. Batch your activities – Putting activities that are similar in nature allows you to process them faster and in one batch. For example, if you need to call or text people, do that in one batch instead of spreading it throughout the day.

11. Use a calendar – I’m often surprised when I still meet people who don’t use a calendar. It is also not surprising these people tend to be late most of the time or even completely forget their commitments. Avoid this by using a calendar. Bonus points if your calendar syncs through the cloud.

12. Tame your email – Email can be a big productivity killer. Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read, check it only twice a day at fixed times and set each session to a limit of 25 minutes.

13. Stop playing video games – They are great way to relax and wind down, but video games can also suck up a lot of time. Cut it completely or limit it to one hour every week.

14. Try a different route – We are creatures of habit and we like to stick to the path of least resistance. Once we have commuted to work on a particular route, we stick to that route no matter how bad the traffic is. Have you ever considered planning a new (and more efficient) route to work?

15. Touch it once – Whenever you get something in front of you, decide right away what to do with it. Don’t let it sit around for you to decide another time what to do. Either plan, do it, delegate or delete.

16. Use text expansion software – If you are someone who writes the same phrases and messages each day, you will greatly benefit from using text expansion software. It allows you set abbreviations (or keyboard shortcuts) and the software will fill it up with text. This is great for phone numbers, email signatures, and anything else you often type. Get started with DashExpander (Mac) or PhraseExpress (Windows).

17. Protein shake – If you want to keep your morning routine short, have a protein shake and a snack for breakfast.

18. Two laptop power adapters – If you bring your laptop home and to work, it is worthwhile buying a second power adapter. This will prevent you from forgetting to pack it. Thus save you a lot of time (and headaches).

19. Clean your desk at the end of the day – Before you stop working for the day, clean your desk. This makes it easy for you to get started the next time you start working.

20. Use a password manager – Trying to remember passwords and wasting time on recovering them is a thing of the past. Use a password manager such as 1Password (Mac) or Lastpass, and all you need is to memorize one password for all your logins.

21. Improve your typing speed – Considering you spend a lot of time writing emails and documents, it’s worthwhile learning how to type faster. This will add extra minutes to your day.

Source:  Work Awesome

First things first.

You enjoy what you do…that’s apparent. That’s why you’re here. It’s not just your work you enjoy, it’s life in general. As a matter of fact, you’d love to be able to enjoy all of it more often – completely, even. That’s always the challenge. Without a doubt, you can’t have it that way unless you really want it so. In order to do that, you’ve got to be not only awesome at what you do, but awesomely productive at it.So you’re set on making that happen. Once you’ve decided that, it leads to the first important question:

“Where do I begin?”

The answer to that one is easy. You start with a plan.

If you fail to plan, then…

Having a plan in place is paramount when it comes to balancing the act we call “life.” Our brains just aren’t built to do things effectively and efficiently without a plan in place. However, deciding to plan is just the first step…it leads to even more questions.

• What are the most important things to plan for?
• What order should I prioritize them in?
• Should I plan everything?
• How should I organize my planning?
• No, seriously, should I plan everything?

I’m not going to get into all of those…we’ll explore a lot of that stuff over the course of the next few months. What I’m going to do is hopefully set you on the path to becoming more productive by answering the question you need to answer yourself first:

“How should I record my planning?”

Not such a simple answer to this question, I’m afraid. It’s pretty subjective, really. What it boils down to is how your brain works. Whatever way works for one person will not work for another. Bottom line is that you have to choose something. I’ve touched on this before. While the options are vast, the ways in which you get things down (in order to get things done) fall into three areas:

• Paper planning
• Software planning
• Web planning (the newest of the bunch)

There are pros and cons to each. Ultimately, it’ll boil down to what you deal with best that will measure your success.

Paper Planning

You don’t need anything fancy (although it does help some to have that structure in place beforehand), you just need something consistent. There’s something holistic about writing things down on paper to keep on track. I don’t know if it’s some sort of link from the paper to your brain or if you pay attention more when you’re writing as opposed to typing. It works for a lot of people, though.

The Pros

• Very portable
• Tends to “stick” better
• Tried and true method

The Cons

• Not terribly “green”
• More difficult to file
• Can cause “electronic redundancy”

Software Planning

Want to be part of the 20th century? This is the method for you (I say 20th century because there’s another method that’s a tad newer…). Productivity software is a huge category; there are a lot of choices out there whether you are a Windows, Mac or Linux user. Many even have a mobile version of their product so that you can take your plans wherever you go. These programs can store a ton of info and in several different categories without filling your file cabinet. If you’ve got a lot going on, this may be the way to go.

The Pros

• Very robust
• Plenty of choices (so many!)
• Support available

The Cons

• Can be very complex and rigid
• Plenty of choices (too many!)
• Not necessarily long-lasting

Web Planning

The newest method of planning is done over “the cloud” – or so those who design these new methods would have you do. The great thing about these is that you have the ability to not bog down your own computer with tasks and to-do lists and can be at computer anywhere and have access to what you need to do. These systems also have the ability to “sync” with your mobile device as well. But what if “the cloud” breaks? Well, you can download your items as well, but then where do you put them? The latest methods of allowing you to be more productive also raises just as many questions as it professes to provide answers.

The Pros

• Accessible at any computer
• (Again) Lots of choices
• Tends to be more adaptable than proprietary software solutions

The Cons

• Monthly usage fees (where applicable) can add up
• (Again) Lots of choices
• Your data resides on the Internet

The Dilemma Is Yours…

But it doesn’t have to be. It’s going to be a challenge deciding which way to go when it comes to your all-around planning practices. I’ll give you some insight on my own methods…which are two-fold.

I’ve been using paper for pretty much all of my life. I keep going back to it, despite having a ton of productivity tools at my disposal. However, I can feel a shift coming on as my projects become grander and my freelancing becomes more diversified. Paper planning is good to keep tabs on thins, but software is far better at handling project planning. So, I’m likely headed back to electronic productivity methods over the course of the summer…but it will be a gradual shift.

There are two things I’ve learned during my study of productivity over the years. One is that if you’re going to make a change in how you do things, make sure you do it right. That, of course, takes planning. The second thing is to make a change and commit to it.

So whether you decide to commit your plans to paper, software or the web, do one thing for certain…commit all the way.

Source: Work Awesome

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Source: Fair Work Australia

An insidious curse haunts all business owners and it doesn’t matter what business model they use or how large or small their company might be. The curse is freedom.

You’d think freedom was a blessing, and it is. It’s the ultimate goal of the successful entrepreneur. They want to enjoy freedom from someone else’s schedule, from corporate bureaucracy and from some lame manager’s to do list. They have the freedom to do work that counts, to blow off on a Tuesday afternoon to spend time with family, or to play by day and work at night.

All entrepreneurs chase freedom. We have our personal reasons to want it, but we share the same goal.

But freedom comes at a price. The curse kicks in and the universe demands payback for the gift we’ve created for ourselves.

Freedom is a curse precisely because it’s freedom. Freedom runs away from structure and hides in the bushes while discipline marches by. Freedom rejects fixed schedules and doesn’t answer when your inner deadline bailiff calls.

Yet if you’re an entrepreneur, you need structure, schedules and organization. It takes discipline to build the kind of business that allows you to blow off afternoons or take month-long holidays without the house of cards tumbling down.

You won’t stay your own boss for long if you don’t harness discipline in your life and business.

How to harness discipline and ride it hard

Trust me, I’m the last person to suggest you adopt discipline as a permanent state of mind. Discipline and I have a tenacious relationship at best. I hold on because she’s valuable to me; she barely concedes to put up with me. (Yes, discipline is a she. I have no idea why. Freud might).

Discipline isn’t some unseen cosmic force. Months of meditation aren’t required. No one is disciplined all the time, but being able to switch it on at the times we need it is the skill that forges business empires. It’s just a state of mind we enter and leave at will, just like any other state: feeling happy, being sad, and so forth. Here are three techniques that focus on cultivating a state of discipline that I’ve road-tested often with clients, with fantastic results.

Set micro goals

You need to set micro goals. Most entrepreneurs figure out that a long-term game plan, a vision board and clear goals are crucial to big-time business success. Yay for The Secret!

But many business owners don’t have itty-bitty sized goals that keep them on the straight-and-narrow of productivity performance. This habit is crucial. Long-term goals are great since they get us fired up and inspired. Actually doing stuff on a daily basis, however, comes down to how you tick off tasks.

The whole point of discipline, for entrepreneurs at least, is to move your business goals forward, bit by bit, each day. It ‘s about incrementally building your business, spooling up your momentum and eventually charging down the freeway of big profits, impact and perhaps fame.

The key is in the daily “micro-push”. You must learn the discipline to add to that momentum on a daily basis, or you very quickly lose any acceleration you have.

Setting micro goals is about translating your long term vision for success into a weekly or, better yet, daily game-plan for winning big in business.

The best productivity system I’ve ever used revolves around the simple concept of writing a maximum of three goals on a single Post-It note. You’re allowed a single Post-It per day. You make it your day’s focus to, above all else, absolutely nail those three goals. If the goals are too big to achieve in a single day, you’re forced to split them into mini goals that can be achieved.

Realistic expectations

The reason the itty-bitty goal system works so well is simple. Setting a maximum of three tasks per day manages expectations. Achieving three tasks is easy. You could probably nail five, if you really tried, but that isn’t the point.

When you set realistic expectations and achieve them, you build a habit of success. You also build a habit of discipline. You’re conditioning yourself to, if all else fails, nail three important tasks per day. That builds crucial momentum.

A lot of entrepreneurs have unrealistic expectations. As a group, entrepreneurs tend to be a fairly cocky bunch. They do have reason for being this way: entrepreneurs are awesome. They achieve huge things. Nevertheless, most entrepreneurs have an unfortunate habit of setting stupid-big expectations for their own productivity.

If you have a to do list with hundreds of items on it, you ‘ll never tick them all off in a day, week or even a month. Even if you were nailing twenty tasks a day, to do lists have a habit of spawning more and more items.

The other sucky thing about unrealistic expectations is that you never meet them. You fail to achieve your performance target, which means most entrepreneurs end up feeling shitty about themselves and their performance.

Realistic expectations, like the “three tasks a day” strategy, give you the chance to win some personal success and, crucially, to pat yourself on the back for doing a good job. Success breeds success. Ticking off your three tasks on Monday (and celebrating) is far more likely to lead to the same level of discipline on Tuesday!

Discipline also applies to breaks

Celebrating your discipline, and the success it creates, is key. To adopt a habit of discipline, you need to convince your unconscious mind that it’s worth it – that there’s something positive to be gained from it all. This means rewarding yourself for a (three task) job well done, rather than beating yourself up over your endless to do list.

Build a habit of small, incremental successes and simultaneously build a habit of celebrating that success. Be disciplined about patting yourself on the back for ticking off your tasks. Be disciplined about taking breaks too.

In most western countries, a minimum of a half-hour break per eight hours work is a mandatory, legislated requirement. For once the government got it right! What is it about entrepreneurs that makes them think they ‘re above taking breaks?

It comes back to cockiness and the belief that you can do anything. Get real. You can’t. You are not Superman.

Working for ten hours straight dramatically affects the quality of your work. If you think you ‘re capable of producing game-changing business ideas and insights while burning the midnight oil, you’re dreaming.

While you are conditioning yourself to be disciplined with work habits, create the same discipline around your breaks and down time. This is the best way — trust me. The alternative means burning out and falling to pieces or, more likely, having your unconscious mind self sabotage your efforts at discipline from the get-go.

Putting it into action

The key to mastering discipline, of course, is to actually do something. Don’t convince yourself that this needs to be some kind of cathartic, transformational, life changing experience where you cry, sweat and bleed. Don ‘t start on a milestone, like next Monday or on New Year’s Day.

Start now. Start gradually, without ceremony or worry. It ‘s as easy as writing three tasks on a Post-It. Discipline can be yours.

So, what do you want to achieve today?

Source: Work Awesome

Entrepreneurs are constantly pressed for time.  If you’ve started your own business, you know that you must be the marketing director, accountant, and sales guy all wrapped into one.  Thus, when prospecting for new business, you must maximize efficiency.

You probably already spend loads of time in internal meetings, and while sales appointments are critical, you must prioritize your
meetings with prospects who are truly interested in becoming customers.  Additionally, one of the primary reasons in-person meeting
take so much time is the travel and waiting time involved.  Quite often sales people think of a one hour appointment as a meeting that
will only take an hour of their time.  This is hardly ever the case.

When launching an appointment setting campaign, you must first determine what type of prospect you are going after.  Your scheduled
visits could be with teams of investors, business decision makers, or merely service administrators and influencers.  No matter what type of meeting you’ve scheduled, these tips can help you improve your appointment setting effectiveness.

Set in place strict schedules before you sit down with the prospect. Understanding precisely what you want to achieve in a meeting can
really help you decide whether a face to face discussion is even really necessary.  Setting goals can also enable you to prepare a time
frame regarding how long you plan to spend at the appointment.  While it can occasionally be hard to get various other people to stay on task, you must remember that nobody wants to spend an entire day in meetings.  Additionally, preparing a road map or outline can help you determine the appropriate time to conclude the meeting.

Offer both date and time alternatives.  Give your prospect a couple of choices of meeting times. If you happen to be doing business with a broader team, it truly is pretty much guaranteed that at least one choice will not likely do the trick for everyone, and featuring two or
more choices is a swifter approach to get to harmony.

Gaining Commitment

When you make an outbound sales telephone call, you are seeking to persuade a prospect, and the prospect is trying to push back against being influenced.  To determine whether an appointment is necessary, use commitment questions to size up the prospect’s level of interest.

The effective use of commitment questions can quite possibly be the greatest tactic to achieve success in outbound appointment setting. Needless to say, closing questions have been written about and discussed to exhaustion.  Still, many novice appointment setters are afraid to push too hard for fear of scaring off potential business. This is a mistake.  If simple commitment questions reduce the number of appointments you generate, don’t fret.  The prospect wasn’t likely to become a customer in the first place.

Using closing and commitment questions, even on the first call, will give you a good idea about the initial perception the prospect has of you.  Put simply, pressing the prospect off the bat can determine the credibility of your message in the eyes of the prospective client.

Be fearless when approaching your appointment setting campaign.  By simply separating interested clients-to-be from casual observers, you will free up more time to get back to your multiple roles of CEO, CFO, social media strategist, and marketer extraordinaire.

Source:  Hit Rate Solutions

I have been experimenting with a new strategy for combatting procrastination and it seems to be working! It’s nothing so genius; it’s actually a very simple idea — which might explain why it has proved effective.

I started using a stopwatch.

When staring down a day’s to do list it is difficult sometimes to motivate yourself to do some of the more daunting tasks. Catching up on emails, recording expenses or ordering office supplies sometimes get pushed down on the list since we would rather be doing more creative tasks… or looking at photos from last weekend’s shenanigans on Facebook.

I have started using time limits as a motivator and it works! Not only does it cause me to be more focused on the task at hand, but by limiting a task to a short time frame the very idea of doing it seems more manageable. Looking at the action item of recording last weeks business receipts sounds awful, but when I say “spend five minutes recording business expenses,” that doesn’t sound that bad — it’s just five minutes, right?

Often with a very short timeline (like five minutes), I find that I get focused in on the task and either finish it within the time limit or when my alarm sounds. Yet I am so close to finishing the entire project and so “in the zone”, that I stay the course and finish it with little to no trouble. Getting started on these types of tasks is usually the larger barrier for us; once they are near completion, the reward of having them done is now motivation enough to finish up!

So here’s how you do it…

1. Write out each task…specifically.

You can’t use this method for vague goals or huge projects. An action item like “write a blog post” or “build a website” doesn’t work with this strategy. Try something like “write an outline for a blog post about the best blogs for funny cat photos.” This is a specific task — and you can likely assign a short time limit to it.

2. Assign a time limit to each quick task.

This isn’t The Price Is Right. There’s no risk if you’re not spot on — just go with your gut! Avoid assigning time slots longer than a half an hour. The point of this practice is to make tasks seem less daunting and to motivate you to focus on them. Assigning yourself 45 minutes to respond to the ten emails in your inbox will just give you license to putz around for most of that time, because you know you have 45 minutes. Try something like ,“I’ll clear the ten emails from my inbox in five minutes!”

3. Don’t watch the clock.

I regularly use this KuKuKlok.com site to set alarms for myself on tasks. I open the site in a browser tab and then hide it so that I cannot see the time as it ticks by. The point is not to focus on the time but just to know… soon, that alarm will sound and you want to be done when it does!

You could also use the stopwatch app on your phone — or if you want to go “old school” you can use an egg timer.

4. When the alarm sounds…

You gave yourself fifteen minutes to write that outline for your blog post about the best cat blogs on the internet, your alarm has sounded and you’re about three-quarters of the way done. What do you do? Stop? NO! You’re on a roll! You’re in the zone — jump back to step two and move ahead. If your gut says, “I could finish this up in two more minutes,” then do it!

You know, it’s not that the tasks are that unmanageable or even difficult to complete — it’s getting started on them that keeps us in that cycle of avoidance. By telling ourselves that we only have to endure this task for a few short minutes, it makes the whole things seem easier to jump into — and you’ll find that once you’re in it… it’s not so bad.

Now, there’s no time like the present. You’re done reading this post, so it’s the perfect time to spend the next five minutes tackling that pesky task you just can’t get off your to-do list. C’mon, it’s only five minutes…

(Image courtesy of wwarby under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license)

SourceL WorkAwesome

“Now you have all the time in the world!” How many times has this line been said to mums who just made the transition from being a corporate slave to a work-at-home mum?

Sure, work-at-home mums have more time in their hands. The commute to and from work is a huge time-saver. But what you must realize is that there are more opportunities to waste your time now that you’re working at home.

Sleeping in late, taking too many frequent breaks, and watching TV are just some of the temptations you’ll encounter. What you need is a plan to make sure that you stay focused and you manage your time effectively.

1. What are your time-wasters?

It’s easy to pick up the phone and chat with a friend. Mums need to identify activities that are considered time-wasters. These may be as mundane as chatting online to something bigger like frequent grocery-shopping or snacking. By knowing what these time-wasters are, you’ll be able to minimize doing these activities and focus on the more important stuff.

2. Make a schedule of your daily life.

The term work-at-home mum has two definitions—a mum who works to earn money and, at the same time, works to keep her home. Mum should set a schedule of her daily life that includes both her work and family activities. A routine will help you manage your time effectively and avoid unnecessary distractions.

But don’t forget to include mini-breaks from your schedule to rest, eat, or for play. These are equally important to stay healthy and stress-free.

3. Make a to-do list.

A to-do list is a lot like a schedule but this gives you a detailed list of what you must accomplish on a daily basis. A to-do list can include errands, people to email or call, tasks that need to be accomplished, etc. You can make a list in a small notebook or your BlackBerry although I know some mums prefer using Post-It notes to remind them.

4. Use technology.

Technology is both helpful and distracting. Make technology your ally by getting an efficient computer system. Your PC/laptop should be in great working condition and your Internet connection should be flawless. You can also set up auto-responders and mailing lists to be efficient. For mums who have their own websites, you can save time by setting up a Frequently Asked Questions page to minimize the need to reply to similar inquiries.

5. Set boundaries.

Mums who work at home often find the lines between being a worker and a mum blurred. How many times have you caught yourself working on your business during family times? Or when your child asks you to read a story, you find yourself telling him to go ask dad instead.

You must set a time when you stop working and focus on being a wife and a mum. One mum I know quits working at 6 PM. When the clock strikes, she drops everything and concentrates on her family. She doesn’t open her emails or take calls. She figures that these can wait until the next morning.

Indeed, work-at-home mums have all the time in the world but make sure that we make effective use of time. With proper management and a little know-how, time would be every mum’s best friend.

How strong a grip does email have on your brain? It is easy to fall into the trap of becoming compulsive about whether your inbox contains any new messages. Just look at the stats.

According to productivity guru Tim Ferriss, 66 per cent of people read email seven days a week and expect same-day responses to messages; 61 per cent continue to check email while on holiday and 56 per cent feel anxiety if they cannot access email.

The reason for the obsession, analysts agree, is that email plays on the perception that a vital message might arrive any second. We think that if we fail to check our email every 15 minutes, we will miss “the big one” that brings a payout, says Adelaide’s ‘Tech Guy‘ Richard Pascoe. Pascoe likens email to a giant poker machine, which captivates gamblers with the promise of intermittent rewards.

Increasingly, it seems, we lack the will to break free – or log off at all. Recent research conducted by US scientists on students found that four in five reported symptoms of distress, confusion and isolation within just 24 hours of logging off. A “clear majority” failed to complete the voluntary 24-hour tech-free period.

“Students talked about how scary it was, how addicted they were,” lead researcher Professor Susan Moeller was quoted in an April 8 report in The Drum magazine.

Peggy Kuo, a Sydney-based developer for the software giant Atlassian, knows all about tech fix cravings. The recovering email addict wrote a thesis on email addiction for her business-slanted bachelor degree.

Before Kuo loosened email’s psychological stranglehold, the first thing she did whenever she went online was check it, regardless of whether she expected a message. And just in case she ever missed one, she set her email system to refresh every minute.

Kuo is still “somewhat” addicted, she admits. To reduce the compulsion, she has disabled new email notifications. Plus, she reminds herself that email is usually “non-urgent”.

Her advice to entrepreneurs bedevilled by electronic mail fixations is simple. Be aware.

“Is your email checking behaviour bordering obsessive-compulsive? Remember: emails you receive can generally wait – the world won’t come to an end if you reply to an email a few hours after it has been sent,” she says.

Just relax, Kuo says. If a message matters and a connected deadline is just around the corner, the sender will find a way to grab your attention, such as instant messaging or actually walking up to your desk and talking to you, which as it happens, seems to work.

But how often do you talk at work any more? If you wonder whether you are addicted to email, consider these seven classic telltale signs.

Email addiction: seven sorry symptoms

1. First thing in the morning, you wake your computer and check your email tally.

2. Throughout the working day, you twitchily check your email every 10 minutes.

3. Before going out, unless you have roaming mobile email access, you set up an auto-responder – even if you are only offline for a morning. As soon as you walk back through the door, you check.

4. You check your email during the breaks of the TV soap that also has you hooked.

5. Going any full day without email gives you withdrawal symptoms – sweats, shakes, even headaches.

6. If you see you have no new mail, you check again, just in case another message has come in the intervening split-second.

7. You checked your email before finishing this list.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

It can seem that your days are packed full, especially if you are working full time. The thought of time to yourself can sometimes seem impossible, however with a little creativity and planning there are ways that you can carve out extra time in your day. Here are a few that I have found:

Use Your Commute
Commuting doesn’t have to be dead time in your day. If you drive to work, you could turn your car into a place to learn. You could listen to an inspirational audio tape or learn a new language. If you travel by public transport you could also do this or read a book. You could use the trip to work as an opportunity to exercise either by walking, cycling  or getting off a stop early if you take public transit. If you commute half an hour each way a day, that could be five hours a week that you could spend on this new activity!

Make Sure You Take a Break
It can be easy to get into the bad habit of eating lunch at your desk and not taking a break, but wherever you work, taking a break will make you feel more refreshed and more productive when you return. If you have an hour’s lunch break, how could you use that time to maximum effect? If you really want to start a blog or a new business, could you use those five hours a week to do it? Bring your laptop in and get started. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you get focused and really use your “downtime” effectively.

Prepare Meals in Advance
I really enjoy cooking but it is often the last thing I feel like doing after being at work all day. What can you prepare in advance? Slow cookers are great. You can chop up the contents of a soup or stew (there are lots of other things you can do in them as well) in just ten minutes and then they are safe to leave on to cook while you are at work. You can then come in the door to the smell of healthy, home-cooked food! You could also freeze extra portions of food you make for those days when you are really pressed for time. Planning some meals for the week will help you be prepared and make it less likely that you will eat out or grab some drive-thru on the way home.

Bringing a packed lunch to work is another time and money saver. It will also give you more control over what you eat. Take a little time to plan your food shopping and menu at the beginning of the week; you’ll save time and ensure that you eat well.

Plan Your Week
I am not the most organized person in the world but I have found that a little planning makes a big difference. On a Sunday night, have a quick look at your week and see if there are any activities you can drop, delegate or double up. For example, if you find yourself going to the supermarket a couple of times each week, write a shopping list for the whole week and just go once. This will help you to feel more in control of your week rather than feeling like your week is in control of you. You don’t have to do everything that others ask of you. Prioritize and try to ensure that as much as possible, you are only doing things that you want to be doing. Cutting back on unnecessary or enjoyable commitments will free your time up to do more of what you want to do — or maybe to enjoy doing nothing at all!

Learn to Say No
Saying “no” is something many people struggle with but it is such a vital skill to learn. If we don’t say no sometimes, we will become overwhelmed or find that our time is filled with activities that we actually don’t want to do. There are only so many hours in the day so start to look at what you agree to and see if you can pare back — or at least only take on what appeals and is manageable. I used to say “yes” to everything and at some point, I realized I couldn’t carry on like that. I was tired all the time and felt like I was living my life for other people. Regain control! You never know, you might find you free up a lot more time than you expect to start that new hobby or business.

Cut Down Your Work Hours
This option won’t be for everyone, but if you can find ways to cut back on your expenditures, you might be able to cut your hours down and free up more time for yourself. I often hear people say that they couldn’t afford to do this, whilst continuously spending money on unnecessary things every week. Work out what your daily rate is and see if you could save that amount each week. It will help you identify what you need to do to cut your hours down. It may be easier to reach than you realize!

(Image courtesy of TheGiantVermin under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 generic license.)

Source: Work Awesome

According to the United States Census Bureau survey, Americans spend more than 100 hours a year commuting to work. Australians don’t fare much better, as the average daily commute time ranges from 22 minutes up to 35 minutes. And if the infamous opening scene from Office Space is any indication, most workers don’t enjoy weaving in and out of traffic (or being crammed into a public transportation, as the case may be).

However, commuting doesn’t have to be a useless time suck, because there are plenty of productive uses for your commute time. Here are a few suggestions:

Read

One of the few things I actually miss about commuting is the amount of reading I used to get done sitting or standing on the subway. Depending on your preferences and tech accessories, you can catch up your RSS feeds on a smartphone, read the latest bestseller on your favorite e-reader, or go old school with a paperback or magazine. Choose something light-hearted if you need escapism or further your career with a business book. I’ve even seen people skimming legal briefs or reviewing notes for a presentation on the subway.

Listen

Maybe you’re someone who drives to work (please don’t try to juggle an e-reader and the steering wheel!) or perhaps you get motion sick trying to read on a moving vehicle. Listening to an audio book or a podcast may be an even smarter use of your time! Many libraries offer audio books to patrons, or you could sign up for an expensive membership like Audible. Many podcasts are available as free downloads. Alternatively, you could listen to some nice, soothing music to drown out the sounds of honking horns or chattering commuters and start your day off right.

Exercise

If you’re lucky enough to live within walking or biking distance from work, this is a great way to squeeze in a workout on nice days. Some companies even offer incentives to employees who bike to work, because it’s more eco-friendly than driving and means they don’t have to provide parking. Just make sure you bring a clean shirt or a towel so you won’t be hot and sweaty during that morning meeting! If your workplace has shower facilities, that’s even better. For those who can’t walk or bike to work, consider parking a few blocks from your office or getting off the subway or bus a few stops early so you can walk the rest of the way and explore the area around your office. You might discover a great new lunch spot or treat yourself to a cup of gourmet coffee.

Socialize

If you can’t walk, bike, or ride public transportation to work, then car-pooling is your next most eco-friendly option. It also gives you a chance to catch up with coworkers, neighbors, or friends and save on gas money. Whether you’re brainstorming for your next client presentation or merely comparing notes about the previous night’s episode of The Bachelorette, car-pooling let you connect with people outside the office and feel like part of a community. Plus, you may not need to spend as much time chatting during happy hour if you’ve already spent time before work chewing the fat.

Daydream

Sometimes you just need a few minutes to let your mind wander (but don’t let it wander off the road if you’re driving!). Daydreaming can help you find a fresh approach to a creative challenge or clear your head for the beginning of the day. Some find that people-watching (especially on public transportation) can keep the creative juices flowing and keep them entertained. Others prefer meditation or even the calming, repetition motions of knitting (just keep those needles to yourself).

Your turn! How do you spend your commute? Is there anything you would add to this list? Leave a comment, and let us know!

Source: Work Awesome