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5 Tools To Get Back 25.4 Hours Per Week
The Strategic EdgeTayla rose |
2 weeks ago I started a new 9-5 job. I won’t lie, I was excited, but extremely apprehensive. I have spent the last year immersing myself with people (on social media, in masterminds and on podcasts) who have or are building their own freedom-based businesses. I set and achieved one of my biggest goals to start working from home at my previous job. I had gotten so comfortable in my routine and I knew what worked for me. So making the choice to step outside of this routine, I definitely felt the anxiety. I questioned if I was making the right choice, or if I was voluntarily locking myself into a prison. I wondered how I would go finding the time and energy to navigate everything…
But I’m sitting here writing this on a Sunday, currently blown away by the fact that I’m genuinely not feeling any sense of struggle. I’m LOVING being out of the house, meeting new people and developing new skills. I’m LOVING my early mornings spent at my new favourite cafe building my coaching program, feeling more inspired and motivated than ever. I’ve already intentionally created a new routine for myself that is working better than I could’ve imagined. And the thing that I was most dreading… the fear of feeling trapped? It’s not there. I could still be in the honeymoon period, and that’s definitely something that I recognise. I still have a vision and goals to create my own business. However, right now, I honestly haven’t felt the struggle of achieving ‘balance’ or fitting in the things that are important to me. There’s many reasons for this, that I will likely explore in future newsletters. But the main thing that it comes down to? I didn’t enter my 9-5 job in the same way that most people do. There’s a reason you feel like there’s never enough time in the day. Why you feel like you’re always busy but never get through your to-do list. We were never taught how to actually manage and maximise our time in the first place. So you, like 99% of people, are simply using the strategies you’ve unconsciously picked up over the years. You’re doing what you think is best, you’re following what has allowed you to scrape by and just manage to find time for everything… without recognising that there’s a better way. A way that creates the time and energy to spend on the things that light you up or allow you to live a better life
I entered my new 9-5 with an entire toolkit of time management, productivity and performance skills, knowledge and habits that I have built up over the past 2+ years. I’ve learnt how to be smart with my time. I’ve learnt how to plan my weeks to fit everything in. This new venture is simply testing how this applies to a different kind of life. So, as I’ve been reflecting on the past 2 weeks, and in the process of building out the content for my new coaching program, I’ve been exploring the changes I’ve actually made to gain back time in my week. I want to give you a special glimpse into this. Today, you’ll learn how to gain strategic edge by making small changes to win back 25+ hours of your time each week. 5 tools to gain back 25.4 hours per week1. Keep a list of ‘portable’ tasksTime gained: 7.5 hours per week Re-introducing a 45 minute train ride to work has reminded me of two things
Every single time I look around on the train, 90% of people are on some form of social media, completely unaware of the valuable time passing by, or the world around them. It’s a dangerous habit, and one I’ve made a very careful intention not to fall into. Because the reality is, scrolling and consumption has turned into a unconscious norm for most people every time they are
It’s not your fault. Everyone’s doing it, it’s something you subconsciously picked up, and now it’s become engrained into your brain. But there is so much potential in this wasted time. So we’re going to give it an upgrade. How? Portable tasks. Portable tasks can be used in almost any situation where you have ‘empty’ time. They typically involve things that:
For example, on my train rides to and from work in the past week, I have:
It may not sound like much, but let’s do the maths. 45 minutes x 2 times per day x 5 days per week = 450 minutes or 7.5 hours every single week. That’s an entire work day. One whole day you get back to
The key here is to always have a list of tasks that you can easily access for these times. The master to-do list that we create in the free Notion101 course has a category for ‘phone’ (or you can create a dedicated ‘portable’ category too). And a note on this too: you could make a ‘task’ to just be fully present and mindful in the moment, or to let your mind wander. Simply having the task there will prompt you to avoid spending the time mindlessly scrolling social media. 2. Eliminate small time wastersTime gained: 4.37 hours per week The weekly Apple screen time notification never fails to amaze me. I went through a phase where I was somehow racking up almost 7 hours a day of screen time. Yes, some of this was due to the fact that I was creating and posting content, tracking my workouts, and listening to music. But those things absolutely did not take me 7 hours. I could never quite work it out, because I didn’t spend an hour straight on Instagram. So how did my screen time get so high? It was those little, innocent 5 minute scrolls that we all do. The ones where:
They feel like they don’t count. But all it takes is 10 of these 5 minute scrolls to wipe out almost an hour of your day. It’s not just your phone that causes the issues either. Small unconscious time wasters are present everywhere in our lives
Once you become aware of them, these small things appear absolutely everywhere. The first step to getting your time back is identifying the time wasters. Gaining awareness gives you the power to make a decision to implement strategies to eliminate them. What strategies could you use? If we take the screen time example, one of my favourite ways to deal with the unconscious Instagram use is to move the location of my Instagram app every week. Instead of finding the app immediately, I have to look for it. This brings my conscious brain into the picture. It creates the opportunity to pick myself up on the habit, and to choose to act differently. 3. Habit StackTime gained: 5 hours per week If you don’t have time for personal development, learning a new skill, exercising or responding to your messages, this one’s for you. Habit stacking involves combining a passive activity with an active one. Passive activities are often physical, and active activities are often mental. This is the only form of multitasking that I will ever endorse. For example:
These are extremely simple changes I often recommend this to my clients who feel like there’s never enough time in the day, or that their personal pursuits always get pushed into the ‘do later’ pile.
All of this makes habit stacking, in any form, one of the best ways to put your productive content consumption and communications on autopilot. There’s no clear time gained for this, but personally, I easily do 10+ hours of habit stacking each week. I’ve gone conservative however and marked it at 5 hours each week. One trap to avoid: don’t endlessly consume content and fail to
Knowledge only becomes power when you put that knowledge to use. I’ve definitely swung too far on the pendulum, but that almost always happens before finding your middle ground. So listen to yourself, acknowledge when you’re trying to do too much or when your brain feels overstimulated, and keep working to strike the balance. 4. Shift low-value tasks to low-value timesTime gained: 4.5 hours per week You will never look at time, planning or productivity the same way once you realise that not all time is created equal. My mental capacity at 7am on a Tuesday is a 10/10. My mental capacity at 6pm on a Thursday is a 3/10. My mental capacity at 12pm on a Sunday is a 7/10. The moment you start recognising and planning around your energy and focus levels, instead of purely looking at your time, your productivity will skyrocket. This is how you get more done in less time. I’ve been observing my energy levels since starting my new job. Here’s what I’ve learnt:
Based on how I was operating before working my 9-5, most of this doesn’t surprise me. Collecting all of these observations has allowed me to organise my time and tasks in a way that takes advantage of my energy and focus levels to maximise the effectiveness of my time. I’ve always been a morning workout girl, but I’ve shifted my exercise to primarily after work, to make time for my business work and writing before my 9-5. This also gives me a boost of energy after coming home from work, so I don’t feel exhausted the entire night. Some other small decisions I’ve made to make the most of my time:
These changes all indirectly save time. Work that would’ve taken 3 hours now takes 2, simply because it’s placed at the right time. So let’s assume you become 50% more efficient at your work, and you’re doing your most needle-moving work for 2 hours a day, thats a saving of 40 minutes each day, or 4.5 hours each week. That’s the power of replacing time management, with a combination of time and energy management. 5. Time BlockTime gained: 4 hours per week Most people treat their tasks like ice. They believe they're a solid block of work that take up a pre-set amount of space. In reality, your tasks are like water. They mould to fit the space they’re given. If you give yourself all day to complete a task that only requires 2 hours, you will make the task more complex, and be more inefficient with your time, until that take eventually does require an entire day. I’ve gone over this in much more detail in discussing Parkinson’s Law in this newsletter. But there’s one key takeaway that is essential to gain back time in your week. Treat your tasks as water, and recognise that your tasks mould the space you give them. Once you understand this, you can actively
My Sundays are completely free at the moment. This makes them the most essential day for me to time block to ensure that the work I do doesn’t stretch out all day when it doesn’t need to. Today, I set 2 hours aside to write this newsletter. The 2 hours is almost up, and I’ve just about finished the first draft. I can tell you from experience, if I didn’t allocate this time, I would’ve sat in front of my computer all day. This is exactly why structure creates freedom. And why the simple act of time blocking, especially for creatives and knowledge workers, is essential to maximise your time and productivity. Again, there’s no set time for this suggestion, but if it turns my newsletter from a 4 hour task into a 2 hour one in a single day, I think it deserves at least 4 hours a week. Strategy SessionThere’s lots of take aways from this week’s edition of The Strategic Edge. You won’t be able to implement them all at once, so start with just one or two action steps. Make sure you save the link to this somewhere to come back and look at the additional tips once you’ve got your first ones nailed. 1. Keep a list of ‘portable’ tasks: Write down an area in your life where you can implement ‘portable tasks’, and create a space to keep this list 2. Eliminate small time wasters: Identify 3 small time wasters, and create a strategy to eliminate (or reduce) these 3. Habit stack: Identify 2 things you currently do each week that you could implement some form of habit stacking into. Plan out how you will do this (ie. if one of your selections is driving to work, what podcast will you start to listen to?) 4. Shift low-value tasks to low-value times: Identify your highest and lowest value times. Do an audit of how you currently allocate those times and explore where you could transfer low-value tasks to low-value times. 5. Time block: Set aside 20-30 minutes on a Friday afternoon or on the weekend to time block your week ahead. P.S. If you do any of these time saving strategies, share them on your Instagram stories and tag me so I can share your insights with our community! See you next week. Tay Whenever you’re ready, there’s 3 ways I can help you:
Tayla Rose
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The Strategic Edge by Tayla Burrell
Helping you master AI & productivity for peak performance and better work-life balance. Join 2,600+ readers achieving rapid success in career and life.