4 Ways To Free Up 1 Hour of Your Day
Do you wish you had an extra hour in your day? Some time to finally get to all those things at the bottom of your to-do list or start working on that personal project?
There’s no need to wish for longer days, instead you can just make better use of the time you have.
The first thing you need to do is stop making excuses. It’s easy to put something off, claiming you’re too busy to get around to it. If you feel that way it’s probably because you aren’t using your time efficiently.
I recently wrote a blog post on how being aware of how much time you spend on various tasks can help increase your efficiency. I like to use RescueTime.com as it tracks how much time I spend on websites and applications. This helps me to pin point my biggest ‘time-wasters’ which I can then cut down on, or eliminate completely in future.
Here are some other ways to free up your day:
1. Outsource – Are you trying to do too much? You don’t have to do everything yourself. In fact the more mundane a task is, the better it is to pass it off to someone else. I use Fancy Hands — a virtual assistant service. Assistants can do research for you, make appointments and even make annoying calls to customer service on your behalf. For the more serious stuff, like creating professional invoice templates, this can even be outsourced to an AI nowadays. OK, so FreshBooks and Zoho are more just software solutions, but still… This frees up your time to work on the things that really matter. TaskRabbit will help you with physical tasks like picking up your laundry and going grocery shopping.
2. Delete your emails – We send and receive on average 121 email per day. Think about how much time is taken up wading through messages that you don’t want or don’t need. Start by unsubscribing from all the spam you get. A chrome extention like Unsub.me can help freeup your inbox space in bulk. For other tips on how to get your emails under control check out my course: Take Back Your Inbox.
3. Start tomorrow today! – Before I go to bed I make a list of everything I need to do the next day. It helps me hit the ground running when I get up in the morning. The more planning you can get done the night before the better. Doing things like laying clothes out, emptying the dishwasher and packing lunch before you go to bed will not only save you time, but will make your mornings more hassle-free.
4. Make bulk meals – Recipes today seem to be less about the quality of the food and more about how quick they are to make. Instead double or triple up on the ingredients of a meal you really enjoy and save the leftovers in your freezer. You’ll be happy you did the next time you’re staying late at the office and come home famished.
If you are trying to free up some time in your day to work on your side gig or passion project you should sign up to my B School email list. I took Marie Forleo’s B School class back in 2014 and it helped me turn my passion project into a real business! Sign up here for updates from me and an inside look at how I used B School to build my business.
How do you free up time in your day?