Could You Give Me an Extra Week/Month a Year?

This is a question people often jokingly ask on a Time Management course, thinking I can’t possibly do it.

Or can I…?

Think about it, if you can say no to enough ‘stuff’ that usually fills up one hour of your time a week that’s over 50 hours a year, or a working week and a bit. And it shouldn’t be hard, it’s less than 10 minutes a day. At home reduce the number of times you do a particular task, or reduce how long you spend doing something - or even get up or go to bed ten minutes earlier!

At work try the same, see if there are any regular tasks that you could do less frequently, or even better not at all. If you can negotiate away one hour per week here as well then that’s another 50+ hours.

Look to improve your systems - and although I’m saying systems this applied to home as well as work. Make sure repeating tasks (if you can’t delegate them) are working as efficiently as possible. For example, only put petrol in the when the car’s nearly empty - and fill it up, don’t just put £10 or £20 worth in on several occasions. You’ll be surprised how much time can be saved just by looking at how and when you do tasks. At work if you can improve your systems, whether they be lists or desk layout or filing or use of excel or anything where you find a way to do repeating tasks quicker or stop repeating problems coming up, in order to save just half an hour per week, then that’s 25 hours more per year.

What about your commute time? Or should I say lack of it? If you’re working remotely or hybrid what are you doing when WFH, how do you use the time that would be taken up with commuting? Having a lie-in? Taking longer to read the news? Starting work earlier? Depending on what you want your extra time for should determine how you spend it, and rarely will you goal be to work more! That freed up commute time could be a week or month ‘gained’ each year all on its own given the commutes some people make.

If something isn’t that important to you, then don’t stress the quality. Good enough is good enough! Don’t be a perfectionist if perfection isn’t needed. With housework, if something it out of sight it probably doesn’t need cleaning as often as the rest of the house? Do you really need to try and perfect that report when it’s still in draft stage and others are yet to add their input? Spend a bit less time chatting about house prices or traffic, just half an hour a week, 6 minutes a day, then that’s another 25 hours per year.

Finally, if you can, delegate one hour a week. Delegating isn’t something reserved for the working environment, and it also includes paying someone to do the task for you, the latter is a win-win if you can afford it.

So there you go, I haven’t given you that extra week/month you were hoping to get after all - you’ve ‘given’ it to yourself - well done.

Now, what are you going to do with it?

I suppose if there is a trick to learn from all this it’s that all the small stuff adds up to something worth having - so don’t let those minutes trickle by, you won’t get them back!