All of us have got 24 hours.
And what we do with those hours is up to us.
And what we get out of life is what we do during those hours
And how much we get out of each hour.
If you are busy all the time, then I think this is the first thing you should do, become really good at using those hours.
Here are some ideas.
- Work on less number of things every day. This will save you from context switching, which decreases your efficiency.
- Work for limited hours. Constraints will make you do more in less time. You may not do it in the beginning but with time you’ll get good and learn it. It also helps you with quality output because when overworking both the quantity and quality of our output drops.
- Train your mind to focus for a particular time block. You may be able to focus 10 minutes for now, that means without getting distracted you can work on a task at hand, so try focusing for 15 minutes. How to put it into practice. Divine your entire day into a 15-minute time block. After every 15-minute take a 1-2 minute break. And after working for 4-15 minute time blocks. Take a 5-10 minute break. This way you’ll be able to work distraction free most of the time and accomplish a lot more.
- Use a template, SOP (standard operating procedure) or frameworks. Do this for anything you have to do more than 3 times. With 1 SOP you may start by saving 1 hour a week. But as you build more SOPs you’ll end up saving 10-20 or even 50 hours a month. So you’ll get more time to do things than matter within your chosen hours.
- Get really good at what you do. For this you’ll need to learn and practice. Get coaching or training from someone who knows better.
- Use good tools, but don’t get fixated on them. Use apps like Zapier for automating tasks across tools, and specific tools based on what you are working on. Get good at using them. Most popular tools offer free training, use that to get better at using a tool.
- Don’t do everything yourself. Get help in areas where you don’t excel. Because most often we spend a lot of time trying to do things we are not good at. So stop struggling if it is not the core of what you do.
Hope this helps you acquire this superpower of using more out of your hours.