First - DECIDE what is most important to you. Then decide to spend most of your time pursuing it! If you fail to do this, frustration will be your constant companion.
After you commit to your main time focus, look for possible time leaks such as the following:
- Did you spend time waiting somewhere today? In traffic or at the doctor's office, for example? In traffic, plug an educational audiotape in and learn, learn, learn. It's been estimated that many people could get a whole college degree's worth of education in just a couple of years in their car. In the doctor's office do strategic planning, brainstorm problem areas, catch up on mail, write that letter you've been putting off. The key here is to always keep simple, convenient-to-carry tasks with you in order to take advantage of unavoidable wait times.
** Possible Daily Time Savings: 15 minutes - 2 hours.
- Plan your meals for the week. It's unbelievable how much weekly time I save when I spend only ten minutes planning out a weekly menu and shopping list. It means I go to the grocery store once, not five times, and I spend NO time during the week fussing over what's for dinner. If something comes up and we change our plans, fine, tonight's menu simply rolls forward to tomorrow night.
** Possible Daily Time Savings: 30 minutes - 1 hour.
- Do fifteen minutes more when it is time to quit. After the kids go to bed, get into some cozy clothes and do one fifteen-minute task. The key here is to make it a simple job that doesn't require much physical or mental energy. For example, enter the day's receipts into your budget ledger, answer one or two pieces of mail, pick up the clutter and dust one room in your house. How does this save time? These are now tasks that WON'T have to be done on the weekend or some other time.
** Possible Daily Time Savings: 15 minutes.
- Consolidate tasks. Bake two casseroles and freeze one. Save laundry to iron once a week. Run errands all on one day. Put a shopping list on the fridge and train family members to write down needed items when they open the last one. Buy bread for a month and freeze it so you don't need to make unexpected trips to the grocery store.
** Possible Daily Time Savings: 15 - 30 minutes.
- Arrange a play date co-op. If you have small children, arranging a weekly play date with one to three other moms can be a real timesaver and put smiles on your little ones' faces, as well. Choose one time per week and take turns hosting the play date. When it's your turn, you watch the kids have a great time and the other parents take off for a couple of hours. Then on the alternate weeks, you have time off! Really make your day hosting the group special and everyone will enjoy themselves.
** Possible Daily Time Savings: 24 minutes (based on 2 hours per work week).
- Train everyone to help with laundry. Your children can do their own if they're old enough, or help you, if they're too young to do it on their own (then they will be ready to do their own laundry when they ARE old enough!). Even toddlers can help fold and put away...and they love helping!
** Possible Daily Time Savings: 15 - 30 minutes.
- Family time. Do you have a daily family time? If not, you are underestimating the power of this tool in binding your family together as well as in saving time. Dedicated time each evening spent going over homework, discussing the day, reading together, playing games, etc. The whole family starts to FEEL like a team and that leads to ACTING like one. You can avert problems (that eat up time), answer questions (instead of being tracked down later), and encourage mutual interdependence on each other (instead of primarily on you).
** Possible Daily Time Savings: 30 -60 minutes.
- Gather all supplies for tomorrow, tonight. Make sure everyone has a space (like a bin) to plop his or her stuff in for the coming day. Spend part of that family time (above) signing permission slips, doling out necessary cash and marking important upcoming school/extra-curricular dates on your schedule. After all, fifteen minutes tonight getting ready for tomorrow isn't a big deal, but fifteen minutes racing around tomorrow morning trying to accomplish the same stuff could be a disaster.
There you have it. Using conservative time measurements, another two or more hours in your day. Once you get started with these ideas, you are sure to find more.
Now your time truly belongs to you!
2 Hours A Day
You're saying to yourself, "If only I have more time to do what I want to do, my life will change!"
Here's what I'm going to offer you:- The access codes to unlock that extra time in the day.
There are 2 hours in the day in which you are most productive, most creative, most motivated, in which, even if you're such a lazy procrastinator, you'll suddenly find yourself turned into a driven productive machine.
Spend these 2 hours well, and in a week, you'll gain yourself 14 hours of supremely productive and creative time. Within a month, you'll gain 60 supremely productive and creative hours.
And in a year, you'll gain yourself 730 hours of supremely productive and creative time spent on finally producing or creating that life-changing work of yours, whatever it is, be it a new business, your great novel, your masterpiece artwork, or simply the job that your boss asked you to do, which, if done, would probably cause you to be promoted.
If you can put a value to your time, how much will you gain every year? If you can spend 730 hours of extremely productive, creative, positive and life-transforming time every year, in which nothing but near-perfection is birthed by you, in which nothing but brilliance is produced by you, how much will those 730 hours translate to money?
How much is 1 productive hour of your time worth to you and other people? Set a lofty target. If, on average, you're worth $10 per hour, double that amount, or triple that amount or multiply it by ten, because, in these 2 hours of the day, your brain is working in such a synchronised, productive and creative manner, that whatever it is you produce will increase in value by at least 2, 3, 5 or 10 times.
How does $73,000 worth of productive time every year sound to you?
Now, what if you don't want to limit yourself to only 730 hours of productive time a year?
Sure!
Spend those 2 hours of the day thinking, meditating and planning for the rest of the day. Spend those 2 golden - no platinum - no diamond - hours, invest in them, to make the rest of the hours of the day more productive and creative. Think about how you can make the rest of the day, maybe your usual office hours, as productive as possible, within these 2 naturally productive hours of your day.
Let's say you work 8 hours every day in the office. Okay, maybe it's too much to ask if you want to make these 8 hours supremely productive. Let's just take 6 hours out of these 8 office hours of yours to be seriously productive time. Add these hours to the 2 golden hours. You have 8 productive hours every day.
Now you'll end up with 2,920 productive, creative hours every years. What if you're worth $100 per hour? That spells $292,000 every year!
Now what if, after having gone through months or years of spending these golden hours every day, your productivity, your results and your ability multiplies geometrically, exponentially, and your time-value further multiplies?
How about $1,000 per hour? Do you think after spending these 2 golden hours every day well for a few weeks or months, you'll be able to grow your value in time from where you are right now to $1,000 per hour? Sure you can! How does $2.92 million per year sound to you?
Now, finally, what are those 2 hours in the day?
The first hour. What time do you wake up usually every day? Wake up 2 hours earlier, go wash your face (no caffeine!), maybe do some warm ups to wake yourself up fully, and spend the first hour thinking, planning, meditating or mentally creating.
The second hour. Spend the 2nd golden hour on mechanical, work stuff. Spend this hour on action. After spending that first hour planning and thinking, spend this 2nd hour on doing and actually beginning to implement what you had planned in the first place. You will somehow find yourself suddenly hard-working, motivated and driven to do things.
Now, if you can get your momentum right, that is, by doing things fast during this 2nd golden hour, you'll find that you'll continue to work and work and work on whatever you're working on, and you'll feel more and more attracted to this work, as if you don't want to stop and you flow with this work, become one with it.
Both Colleen Langenfeld & Mohamad Latiff Bin Rahim are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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