Does this sound familiar? It’s certainly a common scenario. But, what makes it even worse, is the fact that it’s unlikely to be a one-off situation. Many people experience this every workday of the year! It’s no wonder then that the majority of people are feeling overwhelmed by work and stressed by the demands of life. They feel like they just don’t have the time or energy to achieve what they want, and to do things they’d like to do. In fact, I would go even further, and say that most people can’t even find the time to do what HAS to be done – let alone time for family, friends and hobbies. To give you a couple of examples of this, just think for a moment of the pressures that full-time working parents experience, as well as the many people who are forced to work more than one job in order to keep paying their bills. Are you one of these people? If yes, don’t worry, as I’m going to show you some simple ways of ordering your life so you have time left to do the things you really want to do. Take Control of Your Schedule Just like money – you should have a budget for time. That’s because time is non-renewable. Meaning you can’t get it back once it’s been spent. That’s why it’s important to understand where your time is going and where you could improve – especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed with everything on your plate. Chances are, you’re spending time doing things you may not need to be doing yourself (delegation), should be doing for less time (prioritization), or could get rid of all together (replacing bad habits with good).
Prioritization
You may be surprised to learn that you consume a colossal 34GB of information every day. And that’s on top of the 50,000 thoughts you generate in the same 24-hour period. With this amount of mental activity and pressure – it’s easy to see why you might feel overwhelmed by the endless information and data that come your way. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to take back control of your mind. And, it involves using something that you almost certainly already carry with you every day… your smartphone. Yes, your smartphone can act as the perfect memory and organization tool. Let me explain. Instead of trying (and inevitably failing) to remember all the important stuff that comes your way, you can let your smartphone take the strain. It can also help you plan and keep track of your days, weeks, months and years. Until now, you might have only thought about using your smartphone for social media, news alerts, phone calls and selfies! But, your phone can do much more than these things. Especially if you install the right apps. I recommend installing Evernote on your phone. This powerful app makes it quick and easy to jot down notes and ideas – anywhere, anytime. For instance, you can manually type notes, or you can capture images or even links to webpages. And, searching and finding things in your notes is easy, too, thanks to the clever tagging and categorizing options. I’ve used Evernote for several years now, and I can honestly say that it’s saved me hundreds of hours. Previously, I used to jot things down in the inherent notepad app. But I frequently found myself wasting time searching through old notes as they were very unorganized and sometimes difficult to retrieve. With Evernote, your notes are stored securely in the cloud, so even if you lose your smartphone – you won’t lose your notes. The other app I recommend you install is Google Calendar. This app is available for iOS, Android and any browser. If you’ve never used it before, here’s why you should:
You can capture important dates, such as meetings, birthdays and anniversaries. You can set reminders and alarms for key times and dates. You can easily view your upcoming days, weeks and months. You can share your calendar with other people, such as your partner or colleagues. You don’t need to spend a cent (it’s a free app!).
Google Calendar has helped me simplify and streamline my day-to-day life. And, I’m sure it’ll do the same for you, too. Of course, to get the most out of the Evernote and Google Calendar apps, you’ll need to make a habit of using them. (See the habit improvement section below.)
Delegation
However strong your willpower and however much energy and drive you have – you are just one person. That means you only have a limited amount of time to work on the things that you want to achieve. This is why delegation is such an important part of a healthy and successful life. So what exactly is delegation? I like to describe it as leveraging time from an outside source to give you opportunities to increase your quality time. Let me give you an example to show you what I mean. You’re no fan of gardening, but you hate to see your lawn at the back of your house turning into a jungle! So, every week or so in the summer, you head to the shed and pull out your rusty old lawn mower. It’s not great at cutting grass anymore, but with persistence, it does the job. From start to finish, you spend about 2 hours to get your lawn looking half-decent. But, as I mentioned, gardening is not your thing. And quite frankly, having to regularly cut the grass has become a painful chore that eats into your free time on the weekends. There is a solution to your problem… You could choose to hire a professional gardener, or even a neighbor kid to help out–you simply need someone who could come every week to cut your lawn and look after your flower beds, etc. Not only would this save you the hassle of doing the work yourself, but it would also give you a few hours of extra free time a month. You could use this for whatever you fancied, perhaps learning a musical instrument, writing a book or just for meeting up with friends and family. Of course, it’s not just gardening you might want to delegate. Think about delegating things that fall into the following three categories: Once you’ve decided what you’re going to delegate, then start delegating it! It’s at this point that you’ll begin to see the tangible benefits to your life. You’ll have more energy, more time, and you’ll also feel freer and happier than you’ve done in ages.
Habit Improvement
We all have habits – some good and some bad! However, you may not have thought about just how much bad habits can cause you to waste time. One quick example of this relates to the start of the day. If you wake up with an alarm, do you get out of bed immediately when the alarm goes off, or do you hit the snooze button (perhaps several times)? Snoozing might seem like a good thing at the time, but it’s definitely a bad habit. Even if you only snooze for 10 minutes in a morning, that’s an hour a week that you could use to practice your hobbies or even to help build your career. Fortunately, snoozing is just a habit. And, habits can be changed. Let’s see how it’s done… First, you need to understand how habits are formed. Picture in your mind when you learned to drive a car. At the beginning, it was nothing short of nightmarish. The pedals, the mirrors, the maneuvering, the parking! After your first few lessons, you probably thought of giving up. But, your determination was strong, and you persisted with your lessons. And, a couple of months later you were rewarded with a successful driving test pass. While the lessons you had were certainly helpful, the real reason for you becoming a proficient driver was the power of habits. Just think how many times you practiced changing gears, reversing into parking spaces, etc. The first few times proved embarrassingly bad, but as you persisted, you became better and better – and eventually the required skills and techniques became habits for you. This is how all habits are formed: the constant repetition of a specific behavior. Of course, once a habit has been adopted, it’s very hard to break (just think about the difficulties people have quitting alcohol or cigarettes). But, there is a way to do this… Instead of trying to break a habit, work on replacing it with something more positive. For instance, coming back to snoozing, if you force yourself to get out of bed when your alarm goes off, you could then use the next 10 minutes or so for some gentle exercise. Now, this would probably be a very difficult thing to do for the first few days. But, keep going, and not only will it get easier to replace your snoozing with exercise, but after a few weeks, it will become a habit for you. In other words, your old, negative habit will have been replaced by a new, positive one.
Reclaim Your Time
So now you know the secrets to drastically increasing your free time. Use your smartphone to improve your time management and to schedule your tasks, and replace your time-wasting habits with productive alternatives. All that’s left is for you to begin taking action. As the famous proverb states: Take yours now! Featured photo credit: Photo by Zach Betten on Unsplash via unsplash.com
