I Need More Time!

How to free up at least an extra week 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…?

As we all know time is one thing that we can’t buy – no matter how rich we are.  If we ‘waste’ it, we can’t magically create more and put it to better use.  Having said we can’t magically create more time, there is a magic word we can use which will free up otherwise committed time, which we can then spend on the more important things.

The magic word?

‘No’

…or if you can’t manage a ‘no’ think about negotiating.

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. That’s not a tough target.  Admittedly you could avoid having to say ‘no’ by getting up ten minutes earlier – but that’s not the point.  This is about changing how you currently manage your time.

Here's some ideas on what you could say ‘no’ to so that you get those 10 minutes each day – or more!

At home reduce the number of times you do a particular task or reduce how long you spend doing something.  Maybe wash up once a day rather than after every meal.  If something isn’t that important to you, then don’t stress the quality. You might have to battle your ‘be perfect’ driver on this one, don’t be a perfectionist if perfection isn’t needed. Good enough is good enough! Try and apply the 80/20 rule.  Is 80% enough – you’ll spend a lot of disproportionate time and effort achieving that last 20% to get to perfection. With housework, if something it out of sight it probably doesn’t need cleaning as often as the rest of the house?

At work try the same. See if there are tasks you can say ‘no’ to.  This might mean not doing them, but it also might mean getting someone else to do them.  Remember though, a good manager delegates tasks properly and doesn’t just dump and run. Check your routine tasks, see if they could be done less frequently i.e. convert daily tasks to weekly, or weekly to monthly etc.  They will probably take longer when you do get around to doing them, but overall there will be a time saving.  The 80/20 rule is just as applicable here as at home.  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 five minutes less time chatting about house prices or traffic. If you can reduce time spent here by just half an hour a week, then that’s another 20 hours per year.

If you can negotiate away one hour per week here as well that’s going to mount up.

Look to improve your systems - and although I’m saying systems this applies 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 car when the fuel gauge shows the tank’s nearly empty and fill it up. Doing this will take a little longer than only putting £10 or £20 in, but you’re saving yourself the travel time of all those other visits to the petrol station. You’ll be surprised how much time can be saved just by looking at how and when you do tasks. At work you might improve your systems by using lists or keeping up with filing so you can quickly find what you’re looking for, or use excel to automate calculation.  If you can find a way to do repeating tasks quicker or stop repeating problems coming up and save just half an hour per week, then that’s likely to give you over 20 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.

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

Remember – ‘no’ is a magic word, use it effectively and you will find you have more time for whatever’s most important to you.

The trick to learn from all this it’s that all the small stuff adds up, if you dismiss it each day as ‘only’ being a few minutes then you will be left with the same issue of not having enough time.  When you free up 10 minutes in a day actively think about how you are going to use them.  If you don’t have any short tasks it might be that you can  bring forward a small task from another day so that you start to ‘bank’ your savings.  This way you will have a full hour (or more) each week, which is definitely worth having - so don’t let those minutes trickle by, you won’t get them back!

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?