How To Instantly Make Time For Yourself – And Get More Accomplished

Instant Time Product Just Add Water

“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.”
– Bonnie Friedman

Ever wish you had more time? You’re not alone. A recent survey found that:

70% rate themselves as busy or very busy
50% are more busy than they were last year
45% sacrificed time with friends
30% sacrificed time with family
90% wished they had more time to spend with friends and family.

(Source: USA Today Survey. Dr. Zimbardo discussed these statistics in a presentation at the Commonwealth Club, video available in my article about my favorite free online psychology tests.)

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We’re all busy, and getting busier – but our lives don’t have to be so rushed. Imagine what you might do with an extra hour or two a day. Picture yourself going from project to project unhurriedly, knowing that you had enough time in your day to complete everything you needed to do.

In this article, I’m going to lay out strategies I use to instantly make more time for myself – actionable strategies that you can use today. I’d love to hear your thoughts, additional strategies you have, and stories of how you make time for yourself in the comments!

5 Tips To Instantly Make More Time For Yourself

1. Outsource

When most people hear the word outsource, they imagine workers in remote parts of the world doing business tasks or research. Books such as the Source Control outsourcing guide focus on this, but I’m talking about a more fundamental type of outsourcing: hiring people to do chores that you don’t want to do. Some example:

I don’t cook. I hired a chef off Craig’s list and eat out at restaurants. I literally do not have a frying pan in my apartment.
I have with hired people to do my laundry
I use a maid service who clean my apartment, empty and load my dishwasher
I never wash my car, I always take it to the car wash

If you really do need a virtual assistant, then get one – but I imagine for many people, it’s the little chores that add up and eat away at our days.

2. Be Unavailable

Do Not Disturb Sign Hotel Room Door Many of my favorite productivity bloggers advocate setting some limits on how often you check your email. When I really need to focus, I don’t just target email however – I make myself completely unavailable. I turn off my cell phone, turn off IM, log out of Facebook, close my email, and if I am trying to focus at work, I’ll put on headphones – even if I’m not listening to music.

Not only does making myself unavailable keep me from being interrupted, the whole routine of preparing myself and mentally deciding I’m unavailable really helps me to focus on what needs to be done.

3. Stop Doing What You Don’t Want (Nor Need) To Do

How many commitments have you taken on out of obligation, because you felt they were the right thing to do – or simply because you weren’t thinking about it and said yes to them? I’m all for trying new things, but if you’ve taken on too much and are being stretched thin – stop trying to optimize and squeeze seconds out of the day, when cutting activities and projects can save hours.

I’ve been heavily influenced by Leo Babauta’s writing, in particular the excellent book The Simple Guide To A Minimalist Life. I do so much less now than I did last year, and I’ve actively been trying to remove physical items as well as unnecessary projects and tasks out of my life. Take a look at what you’ve got on your plate, and let some things go.

On a related note, if you’re having trouble saying no when people ask for help, you may benefit by reading about my strategy of saying no with an empathy sandwich.

4. Use Your Time Actively (Cut The Television and Web Browsing)

One of the things I learned when I tracked where I was spending my time online was just how much of my time was flat out wasted. I didn’t need more time – I needed to just stop wasting the time I already had. Instead of passively wasting days away, actively live your life.

I think one of the biggest challenges of our generation is dealing with is the twin time sucks of television and the internet. I have a whole slew of strategies for how to stop wasting time online. Here’s on thought that helps me focus:

Imagine how much time you already have right in front of you that is spent online or in front of the television. Every moment you spend watching TV or browsing random websites – you are making someone else rich. Why not instead spend that time on yourself?

5. Put Yourself First

I Love Myself Put Myself First I previously discussed my strategy for paying myself first with my time. Briefly, I work on my personal projects first thing in the morning – and then the rest of the day I deal with whatever else needs to be done.

I work on myself first regardless of how busy a day I have, and regardless of any external obligations I need to take care of. I don’t worry about the details of how everything will get done. Regardless of how much or little time I have the rest of the day, I always find a way to take care of everything. And if I don’t? Then clearly I’ve taken on too much, and I need to let some things go.

Put yourself first, and work on your goals before anything else. My good friend Austen wrote about this recently as well, about how working out early in the morning one day changed his life.

Your Thoughts? Strategies?

What strategies do you use to make more time for yourself? Do you have any examples of using these strategies in your life?

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