Find Hidden Pockets of Time
One of the cries of the person who is looking for better ways to manage time is “I don’t have enough time!” While for some people this is true, at the same time, most people have bits of time they aren’t using. When we located and use those bits of time, we can actually expand how much time we have to get things done.
Today we will look at how to find those hidden pockets of time and put them to the best use.
Look At Your Schedule
Pockets of time appear in our schedule as those spaces between appointments. The first place to look for hidden pockets is on your calendar. Block in your work time. Make sure you leave out the time you take for lunch. Block out the time you use to get ready in the morning and family time for dinner. Now, what do you have left?
I’m not an advocate of working through lunch, but do you have 30 minutes after you eat where you could run an errand or do some paperwork?
Do you have time during a child’s music lesson when you could read or respond to email?
Do you have a block of time after you get home from work but before you need to start dinner?
Look for the little blocks of time that you might have once dismissed as being worthless.
Do A Time Audit
The next place to find hidden pockets of time is with a time audit. I’ve talked about the usefulness of a time audit here and here, and this is another place to use those results. Maybe there are adjustments you can make in your schedule to bring your life back in balance that may free up some time.
Let’s say you have determined that the extra hours you are putting in at work aren’t having results worth the effort. Can you use that extra half hour to do some of your other tasks that have more definite returns?
What To Do With A Hidden Pocket of Time
So now you have a small block of time. How can you put it to the best use?
It’s fairly easy. You should have a list of tasks that need to be done. They may not be the most important tasks, but still ones that need to be done and done by you. Next, you need to know how long each of these tasks will take.
Let’s say you’re at home, and you have 30 minutes before you need to leave to pick a child up at soccer. You look at your list, and see that you need to take out the garbage, wash the comforter from your bedroom, plan the menus for the next week, put away the Halloween decorations and clean the cat box. While you know that you can’t get all of this done, you can get a few things off the list.
Let’s look at how long these things will take:
- Garbage: 5 minutes
- Comforter: 45 minutes
- Plan menus: 15 minutes
- Put away decorations: 30 minutes
- Clean cat box: 10 minutes
You know that the comforter will take the longest, but you don’t have to be there for most of it because the washing machine will do the work. So that should be the first thing, to get it started. Then you can get the garbage out and clean the cat box. That will leave you with about 10 minutes left of your 30 minute block.
There is nothing that you can complete in that time, but you could break down your other two tasks so that you could get part of it done. For instance, you could pull down all the decorations in an area of the house and stage it to be put away. Or you could plan meals for 3 days.
In any case, this block of time which you previously may have frittered away is now filled with productive tasks.
For those of you who support me on Patreon, I will be making this a bit more concrete. I will be sending out a mini-sprint guide on Wednesday. This form will help you put your small blocks of time to best use. If you want to get access to this exclusive content, please support me on Patreon.
So how well do you utilize those small blocks of time? What will you do about it? Leave a comment and let me know.
Image by danielmoyle. Licensed under Creative Commons. Text added.
