How To Add More Hours To Your Day!
Ever felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done?
Let me tell you, I can relate!
Time management seems to be an issue almost everyone faces as they struggle to fit everything into their daily lives. So many things to do in so little time! It’s a struggle we all face.
Now, while we only have, and only ever will have, 24 hours a day, these problems that we endure aren't due to a lack of time, but due to a misuse of time.
Time is money; And in order to make the most out of your day…
Here are my top time management tips that will add more hours to your day!
Find Your Gap Time:
Did you know that an approximate 2-5 hours of our day are spent in ‘gap time?’ If you’ve heard the phrase, ‘gap time’ is time placed in between meaningful activities that is long enough to waste time but not long enough to get anything important completed. This includes cooking, taking the bus, waiting in lines, commercial breaks or walking to school. The aim of finding out where your gap time lies is to find a meaningful alternative to watching tv, going onto the internet, playing video games or checking your emails. The next step after finding out your gap time is ‘Acknowledging Your Time-Wasters.’
Acknowledge Your Time-Wasters:
When you reflect on your average day, where do you spend the majority of your spare time that isn’t on your to-do list? In between school, transportation, activities and homework, most of us wastefully spend lots of our time. The goal of this is to figure out what distracts you enough to waste time, and how to minimize or ideally eliminate these time-wasters. Some examples include watching Tv, scrolling through social media, talking to friends or getting snacks. By learning how to minimize these time-wasters, you will be left more room to do the important stuff!
Cut Out Distractions:
Once you’ve acknowledged the distractions in your home or at your school that cause you to waste time, it’s important to find out how to get rid of these distractions. For example, if you enjoy watching tv, study in an area where a tv isn’t present or ask a family member to hide the remote and turn it off. If you enjoy scrolling through your phone, place it in another room when studying. By finding simple ways to cut out these distractions, you actively add time to your day.
Learn To Say ‘No’:
In order to add more time to your day, It’s important to know how to say no. When you take on every responsibility and constantly say yes to people, you take away any and all of your free time. In order to make the most of your time, choose what you accept and what you respectfully deny as extra responsibility.
Schedule Your Day:
One of the most efficient ways to add hours to your day is to create a daily schedule. Once you complete this, look at your schedule and think about what you want to do versus what you are currently doing every day. You’ll be able to see a visible difference of how much time you waste doing things you shouldn’t be doing every single day. As I'll go through later, you’ll then declutter your schedule of everything you’re doing that wastes time. Lastly, create blocks of blank areas of your schedule for leisure activities you want to do for yourself, such as family time, outings with friends or exercise.
Delegate Tasks:
If there are other people like you who can complete projects you are feeling overwhelmed by, try to delegate the task. In school, you can often find ways to complete your work with another student, ultimately giving each of you more time to spend otherwise. By delegating tasks and extra responsibilities, you are allowing yourself to focus on specific core projects that you need to complete.
Declutter Your Schedule:
This topic builds on delegation. Write out your weekly schedule and look at it. What is overwhelming you and needs to go? If you have unnecessary chores, errands or tasks that are non-urgent and take up your time, try to declutter your day-to-day schedule in order to prioritize alternate tasks. Try to postpone these tasks in order to leave some blank areas in your schedule.
Actively Write Your To-Do List:
One of the worst things busy people do is rely on their brain to memorise their schedule and daily/weekly activities. Unfortunately, this can be unreliable and time-wasting. By taking a few minutes of each day to actively write down and build on your to-do list, you can visually see what you need to do and create a way to do it. Not only will this help you keep track of your schedule, but it will also give you a visual representation of your ideal day.
Prioritize Your Schedule:
As well as decluttering your schedule, it’s also important to prioritize. While you can’t create more time to do everything on your list, you can create a shorter, more efficient list by using an urgency and importance square. This is done by placing all to-do activities into 4 boxes.
Urgent - Important
Non-Urgent - Important
Urgent - Non-Important
Non-Urgent - Non-Important
Anything in the 4th box can be delegated whilst the other 3 are completed in order accordingly.
Disconnect From Social Media:
One of the biggest distractions people experience is social media, and I completely get it! Social media is super addicting; so much so that I’ve found myself scrolling through tiktok and instagram for hours at a time. Usually, our most productive times of work are when we are completely disconnected from social media or distractions. This doesn’t, in any way, mean you should stop social media completely, it implies that to effectively complete your work, you need to disconnect from your social media at some point. To work productively without your phone, download an app that rewards you for not looking at your phone, such as Forest.
Stop Hitting Snooze:
For most people, the snooze button wastes approximately 20 minutes of the average person's day. When you first wake up due to the alarm, you usually feel tired and drowsy, tempting you to hit snooze. However, every time you hit the button, you waste another 10 minutes of your day (very quickly adding up.) Instead of wasting time hitting snooze, try going to bed earlier and jumping out of bed as soon as you hear the alarm. While it may be hard at first, it will become easier as you create a habit out of it!
Get More Sleep:
By getting more sleep each night, you are much more likely to wake up refreshed, energised and ready for the day. As a result, you are less likely to experience brain fog or grogginess, and will have more time to analyse and efficiently complete your tasks of the day!
Prep Your School Lunch:
Meal prep is one of the best ways to save precious time, most of which comes from your mornings. By prepping all of your school lunches/lunch foods on the weekends, and storing them in the fridge or freezer, you save yourself heaps of time on busy school mornings. This leaves you with up to half an hour of free time to do whatever you want to benefit your future.
Prep Your Clothes The Night Before:
While this seems simple, laying out your clothes the night before school can actually save you heaps of time. For me, I collect everything and put it on a hook, then in the morning I jump out of bed, grab it and sprint to the shower.
Multitask Simple Chores:
To find positive use of time completing boring chores like folding the laundry or doing the dishes, use the time to do something beneficial. This could be listening to a podcast you’ve been meaning to listen to, read a book, reply to emails or check your social media. This will make it so you use your time now, rather than later!
The Bottom Line:
Unfortunately, time is precious, and there will only ever be 24 hours in a day. However, by applying these tips to your everyday life, you’ll undoubtedly squeeze in a couple extra hours into your day! Thanks for reading!
I WANNA KNOW! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO USE THESE TIPS TO ADD HOURS TO YOUR DAY!? COMMENT BELOW!
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Hi, I’m Mia!
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