Four simple ways to claw back time in your day

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They say time is finite. But only if you’re doing it wrong. In a world of relentless demands, meetings, presentations, deals and deadlines to meet, it can seem impossible to create some space for yourself. The good news is that clawing back time doesn’t have to be complicated – although it does demand discipline and a willingness to look outside the box for solutions. We look at the four simplest – and most effective – ways to help you design your work day so that you can regain time to breathe.

 

#1 Create online islands

It’s so oft repeated that it’s become a cliché – and yet turning off your devices and social media and putting your focus in the now is the number one way to reclaim time – and the easiest. Research by Neilson Online (i) found that over the course of your life you’re likely to spend six straight months on Facebook, Twitter and the Next Big Social Media Thing. The future of work and life means taking control of your digital flow, so think of enlisting apps to help you such as Freedom and Cold Turkey which will block your online use for a certain period. Alternatively, just make a commitment to turn off notifications and schedule time in your diary to check social media and email, pushing distractions to predictable times. In this way you create islands of online time, in a sea of life – rather than drowning in an endless information ebb and flow. Plus, your focus will increase – one study (ii) found that people take around 25 minutes to resume tasks interrupted by the insistent ping of online distractions, which is a significant amount of rebooting in a day. And if you’re worried about not being accessible at all times at work, then put an out-of-office on your email with a phone number if the request is urgent.

 

#2 Miss out some meetings

Meetings can be the bane of a business life, and although face-to-face can be valuable there’s no doubt that we are still all going to too many unproductive ones. Start from the root – and reduce the amount of meetings you say yes too, before you look for other solutions. Before you press accept, ask yourself whether you really need to attend. And if the answer is no, then decline and adopt a less time-intensive route, such as asking to look at the agenda ahead of time to pass your comments on or sending someone else in your team. Encourage a culture of time-saving in your organisation through making sure your are clear on whether a meeting is actually necessary – and why – before you schedule it. Is this something that can be discussed or actioned by email, does it need the whole team or could you talk about it with key people over coffee? If you do need to call a meeting then make it virtual where possible instead of face-to-face – by telephone, telephone/video conference or online – and crucially make sure you stick to strict time limits and create focus with a clear agenda.

 

#3 Sync up with your productive periods

Working 9-5 might be a way to make a living, as Dolly Parton says, but it might not be the best way to make full use of your energy levels. Research shows that the circadian rhythms – the natural energy regulation systems of the body – don’t neatly fit into the demands of the world of work, and forward-thinking managers understand that the same employee will be more effective at some times of the day than others. There will definitely be periods when it will be easier to power through things than others – taking a lead from your “chronotype”, or natural time inclination – and if you keep a log of your energy levels over a couple of weeks you should be able to identify them. Once you have done that, make sure you schedule deadlines or high intensity work for these periods. If you want a quick and simple way to ride your energy wave though, then follow the advice in a recent piece by the Harvard Business Review (iii), which suggested that the most important tasks should be conducted when people are at or near their peaks in alertness (within an hour or so of noon and 6pm), while the least important tasks should be scheduled for times in which alertness is lower (early in the morning, around 3pm, and late at night).

 

#4: Cut down on your commute

Commuting is perhaps one of the biggest time drains for workers – according to action group Work Wise UK, we spend around 29 days a year just getting into work, which is a month of productivity lost. In addition, British workers have the longest journey times in Europe and London commuters come out worst of all, spending a sobering 18 years traveling to and from work in their lives. Working at home – even one day a week – can deliver you back hours of time, and the rise of agile working solutions suggests that work cultures are finally catching up with this. If you haven’t investigated the possibility of agile working in your organisation yet then try laying out the statistic from The Worklife Company (iv), that it can boost productivity by 38 per cent in front of your line manager – and then present a written proposal to back it up. And if working from home isn’t suitable or viable then look at other alternatives including condensed hours, four-day working weeks and flexible-place working – where you agree to work from another location nearer to home for set hours each week, such as the satellite shared working spaces of companies like Near Desk.

 

  1. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2017/2016-nielsen-social-media-report.html
  2. https://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/CHI2005.pdf
  3. https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-ideal-work-schedule-as-determined-by-circadian-rhythms
  4. http://worklifecompany.com

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