4 Simple Ways to Claim Back Your Time

Time management.

Sounds like a snore doesn’t it?

It’s one of those topics that I never really thought about because I felt I was great at time management. It wasn’t until I decided to start my business that I realized being productive and using my time wisely can be tricky.

This post is for you if you wish to be more productive at work, find yourself procrastinating on the ‘to dos’, find it hard to stay focused when studying, or get distracted when trying to build a business full-time or on the side.

In the book, 30 Days to Wealth, author Leanne Grechulk gives great tips on how to claim back your time. What I love about this book is that it’s thin and doesn’t waste time getting to the point.

So how do you become better at managing your time and become more productive?
Here are some tips that I’ve been following from Leanne’s book that I’ve found super useful.

1) Assume your time is worth $500/hr

This smart piece of advice was actually recommended by Donald Trump, and it completely put things in perspective for me.
When we place high value on our time, why would we want to spend it doing things that consume our energy and bring little results? The more we spend our time doing things that don’t serve us, the quicker we lose money. This perspective made me think twice on performing mindless tasks like web surfing and checking email.

2) Keep a journal on how you spend your time every hour for one day

Even if you tell yourself you’re going to spend the next 2 hours on quality work, do you really end up doing that? Actually writing down what you do during each hour is very revealing. This was a big ah-ha for me. I realized that even when I told myself I was going to dedicate the next chunk of time on something productive, it didn’t always end up that way.

I noticed I would get distracted and end up checking my text messages, surfing the net, grabbing something in the kitchen, and even daydreaming. I wasn’t even conscious of these ’minor’ sidetracks until I wrote them down.

The biggest time sucker that kept coming up for me was email, which is a great segue into step #3…

3) Choose one day to be email free (and for the remaining days, schedule email time)

This one can be tough to do. It is for me! So if this sounds daunting, I suggest choosing a ‘slow’ day, like Sunday, to start off. Use your email's autoresponder to tell senders when they should expect to hear from you and give yourself permission to turn off your email. It’ll be okay. Really.

Another idea is to take some time, and create filters for blogs and newsletters that you subscribe to. Doing so takes the urgency out of your inbox, and lessens the distractions from email notifications.

Also, do your best not to check email right after you wake up. It really can be a big distraction and when your time is worth $500/hr, you’ve got other important things to do.

4) Implement the 20 second rule.

So this is a bonus tip for any procrastinators. This wonderful tip is actually from The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor. He recommends that you’ll be less motivated to do something if it takes more than 20 seconds to do it.

If you find it really easy to sit on the couch and turn on the T.V., make it harder by taking out the batteries and separating them away from the remote in different rooms. Generally, for time draining activities, if it takes you more than 20s to do something, you’ll be less likely to do it!

So this applies to getting things done as well. If you wish to exercise in the morning but find it much easier to hit the snooze button because there are just too many hoops to jump through before getting to the gym, make it easier by sleeping with your workout clothes on. You’ll have less reason to say ‘no’, and will procrastinate less.

The tips above really helped me be mindful of how I spend my time. It’s not about perfection, but enjoying the process.

My biggest takeaway is that we can decide how we want to spend our day. We get to create our own time. Once I understood that concept, my perspective on time management shifted, and I’m more conscious to when my time gets dominated by email and distracted from mindless web surfing.

How about you? Any ah-ha moments, or ideas on how you ward off distractions?

Please comment below, and share this post if you enjoyed it!

To your success,
Michelle

*Note: this article was first published at Michelle's blog - www.michellewwong.com, and has been modified for Self-Growth.com