I’m Late! I’m Late! Does this ring any bells? We live in a world where everyone seems to be under a time crunch to some extent. People have too much to do and not enough time to do it all in. So how can anyone expect you or me to make time to pursue our entrepreneur interests outside of our already packed to the max lives? Well, it might surprise you to know that there are some steps you can take to free up time in your day. Read on to see how in 20 minutes, you can rearrange your daily routine to get more free time out of it!
Between a 9-5 daily work schedule and everything else that would need to be done before and after work, I found myself in a situation with very little free time on my hands. I had projects I wanted to try and things I wanted to do that just seemed to keep getting pushed out due to the daily routine of everything else that needed to be done. After a few months of this and getting frustrated with the lack of time I had to do other things like starting this entrepreneur blog, I decided to take action. Here now is a solution someone taught me recently on how to make time for yourself:
- Sit down in a relaxing and quite space where you are free from distractions and able to think clearly
- Think about your daily routine and write down everything you do on a given day (i.e work, gym, make dinner, walk dog, watch tv, etc…). Also, write down roughly how long each task takes you on any given day (i.e work (8 hours), gym (1 hour), etc…).
- Now step away from your list for about 1 day and give yourself time to see if you’ve missed anything you should have included.
- Now come back to your list and look it over. Give your list a full scan and look for tasks you do are not crucial to your day. For example, I listed watch tv @ 1 hour a night. That is a perfect example of time I could be using to work on a side project of some kind. Go through the list and circle all these type items.
- Now rewrite your list of daily tasks with the last task item being FREE TIME and the total number of minutes/hours after it that you got by eliminating the previous tasks in step #4.
- At this point, you might now be surprised and satisfied with the time you were actually able to determine you have on any given night to work on following your entrepreneur dreams. If not, go through your list and now look for ways to shorten existing activities (maybe you walk the dog for 10 minutes instead of 20 or go to the gym for 40 minutes instead of an hour). This will give you additional free time to add in. Repeat step #5 until satisfied.
- Take your new block of free time and use it to focus on your other interests that you didn’t have time for before whether it be starting an entrepreneur blog or doing research for an idea you’ve had for some time now. Use the time wisely!
This really helped me focus in on areas where I was able to find free time in my daily routine, which is one of the reasons I was finally able to start this blog and 2 other projects I am currently working on. I think you’ll be surprised to see where some of your time is going on any given day and where it could be going.
The temptation to come home and crash on the couch for the night can be strong (trust me – i know), but if pursuing new ventures in your life is as important to you as it is to me, you’ll find ways to do so. I hope others find this guide to be useful in taking the time to make time in their own lives. As always, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!
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Solid 7 step process to finding more time. I’m going to give this a shot this weekend and see what I come up with. I’ll let you know how it goes!