Do you ever wish you could create more time every day — even just an extra hour?
Just think how must faster you could plow through your to-do list, or how quickly you could boost your productivity!
This past weekend, Dave and I enjoyed an “extra hour” in our day… sort of! 🙂
Where we live in West Michigan, our time changes twice a year for Daylight Savings Time — once in the fall and once in the spring.
In the fall, we move the clocks back 1 hour… so on Sunday morning, it sort of felt like we gained an hour and had just a little bit more time.
Of course, our children don’t understand this, so they simply woke up earlier!
Prior to Sunday morning, Dave and I were joking about the prospect of having an extra hour every single day — thinking through everything we could do with that time.
Some of our ideas were:
- exercise (he’s pretty good about this, I’m horrible)
- more house or yard work
- more blog or school work
- spend individual time with each child one day a week
- enjoy more time with just the 2 of us
- read
- actually watch some of the shows we have saved on our Netflix list
- catch up on anything we feel behind on
- sleep 🙂
I’m certain I could come up with hundreds of ways to utilize an extra hour of time every day… but just for fun, I’d like you to think about it…
What would YOU do with more time every day?
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Now that you’ve thought about it for a minute, I’d like to pose the idea that you COULD most likely enjoy more time every day for these things.
Obviously, having a literal extra hour every day is impossible… sorry, I’m not that good!
BUT… what if you could increase your productivity, streamline your to-dos, drop a few non-essentials from your schedule, and carve out an extra 30, 45, or even 60 minutes EVERY SINGLE DAY to do whatever you wanted to do??
Sounds sort of magical, doesn’t it!
More time is possible… I promise!
I’m always asked how I find the time to do so many different things each day like…
- make my own bread
- keep up with our digital photo books
- serve a huge amount of fresh produce at every meal
- maintain the thousands of plants in our yard
- tackle various home projects and to-dos
- continually publish 5 blog posts each week
- volunteer at church and the kids’ school
- reading
- and the list goes on…
One of the reasons I have more time to devote to everything listed above is that I say “no” to so many other things like traveling, working outside the home, extensive personal maintenance, shopping, “hanging out” with friends, date nights, etc. etc.
The other reason I am able to create extra time in my days is that I practice a handful of very simple techniques that I’ve found to instantly boost my productivity and allow for significant amounts of “extra time” every day!
If you’d like to create more time in your days, I’m confident a few of these techniques will help steer you in the right direction!
9 Simple Techniques to Create More Time Every Day:
*Click on the links below to read more in-depth about how these techniques have worked for me.
- Wake up earlier or stay up later.
- Drop one of your current to-do’s — maybe one you aren’t totally excited about.
- Say “no” to new requests for your time.
- Delegate one or more of your tasks to someone else (family member, coworker, hired help)
- Opt for quantity over quality and allow yourself to be OK with “less than perfect”.
- Limit your social media — we all know this can be a huge time suck.
- Keep your freezer stocked and plan your meals ahead of time to save time in the kitchen.
- Turn your phone notifications OFF to prevent time-sucking distractions.
- Use a timer to keep you focused on the task at hand.
NOTE: try combining a few of these ideas for optimal amounts of extra time.
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The best part…
Often, when it comes to making life changes like better time-management, the process is SLOW. However, with most of these techniques, you will see an IMMEDIATE increase in the amount of extra time you have!
So honestly… what would you do with more time?
Now, what will you do to create more time TODAY?
Rhonda says
For me, another way is to 10. Plan Ahead.
If I don’t plan ahead, I spend a lot more time in “indecision” mode!
Andrea says
yes, for sure!
I think planning ahead is almost a “given” for me (which is maybe why I didn’t think to put it on my list!) Thanks for reminding us all how important it is to PLAN AHEAD!!
Natalia says
If I had one extra hour a day….I’d love to (HAVE TO) declutter our pictures and make books…. This is my special project for this week.
How will I gain that hour? Following your tips, especially #3, 5, 6, 9.
I especially need this for today, as my husband and youngest daughter came down with a stomach bug. So far, I spent more than an hour laundering and disinfecting… So, I lost instead of gaining… Oh, well. There will be better days ahead. For today, I’ll have to lower my expectations and take care of my family. Pictures will have to wait ☺
Andrea says
oh my — 2 down at one time is never good!
hope the bug passes quickly so you can all get back to normal over there!
Natalia says
Thank you, Andrea! They are slowly mending…
And I’ve been on my phone today even more than usual. Yeaks! Zero progress today, just lots of cuddles, some baking and I caught up with laundry. Just staying afloat…
Andrea says
yes, somedays are just staying afloat — glad you got on top of the laundry!
Crystal Michie says
At first I thought ‘I would sleep!’ but now seriously thinking, I guess I would read. I love to read, and it’s so easy to get forgotten or pushed aside for something else. Thank you for the post! 🙂
Andrea says
Yes, sleep is always nice, but I have so many leisure activities I’d love to do more of (reading, Netflix, gardening, baking, etc.)