9 Mind-Blowing Time Management Tips that Will Magically Create Extra Hours

Every once in a while…a post comes along that blows your mind and changes your life with life altering time management tips.

This post probably won’t be it. In fact, you might save time by not reading it.

But then again…maybe these are the 9 best time management tips your eyes will ever behold. Oh shoot…you have spent the time and have come this far, might as well stop wasting time and read them to figure it out!

Time Management Tips That Melt Minds

1. Create Daily Goals and Prioritize the Top 5 Items

Do the important stuff first. That is the first rule of effective time management tips. Often that means doing the hard things first. Be willing to stretch yourself to do the uncomfortable thing first in order to be successful. Become like water my website friend. Often that tweak can mean the difference between success or not.

This also means you need to evaluate your previous goals to see how effective they were. Learning from yesterday can make for a much better today.

2. 8-10 Hours of Sleep

I know this sounds crazy to some of you. More sleep seems a lot like less time. Au contraire mon ami.  This is actually one of the most impactful personal time management tips you can include in your daily routine.

One of the biggest reasons we are unproductive is a lack of focus and energy. By getting sound sleep it will go a long way toward getting back that productivity. This sleep should be 8-10 uninterrupted hours in a dark, cool room. Don’t settle for less. You will literally ruin the next day.

Without sleep, it increases your level of the hormone cortisol, which spikes your insulin levels (another hormone) similar to a person with type 2 diabetes. That is not good. Your whole day can be a mess and it can lead to those terrible midday crashes. Make your day more valuable and and follow my time management tip to you: get some solid sleep.

3. Eat Healthy

In 1950 DuPont hired Dr. Alfred Pennington to find out why the traditional low-calorie diets were not working to help their employees lose fat. Pennington put the DuPont executives on a high-fat, high-protein, low-carbohydrate (80 calories of carbs per meal) unrestricted-calorie diet. Pennington believed that people can metabolize fat just fine but not carbohydrates as well no matter how you try to minimize carbs.

This process of fat and protein metabolizing to be used as energy later became known as gluconeogenesis and also a similar chemical process called Ketosis. Majority of the DuPont employees all ended up losing fat and were able to keep it off. Pennington also mentioned that employees had a great deal of energy and a higher sense of well-being.

4. Start Your Day with Exercise

One of the best time management activities is exercise.  While maintaining your 8-10 hours of sleep is a must, it is also valuable to get your workout done in the morning. This translates into a lot more energy throughout the day and more fat loss. The genetic disposition of a human shows that they have more cortisol to work with in the morning. As the day wears on, your body naturally wants to do less.  Countering this can have negative effects on your cortisol levels by shooting it up in the evening. I would try to work out in the morning or afternoon.

Another nice benefit of the morning workout is that your body has a lower number of carbs to burn and more triglycerides or fatty acids to use as energy So your body goes straight to the fat source for energy, instead of the blood sugar that is circulating your blood stream. as the day progresses This also means more energy throughout the day and no midday crashes so you can become more productive with your time management.

5. Measure Your Day

One of the biggest mistakes we make is that we aren’t clear on what is the most effective use of our time. Not only are we vague about what we should do with our day, but we are blind to what we just did the day before. Rarely do we look back at the end of the day and say, “Did I make the most effective use of my time today?”

I would ask yourself either at night or the morning after,

• What were the right things I did today?
• What were the wrong things I did today?
• What % of your day is spent doing the right things?
• How does this impact today and what I want to accomplish?
• What should I be doing today after what I learned from yesterday?

It is pretty simple and these are smart time management techniques. You need to find out what in your life is detriment to your goals and dreams compared to what is actually getting you there. Think hard about this. Sometimes the most detrimental things aren’t always the most evident actions. It is often the small things that kill our time. They can be things that seem harmless or even things we enjoy dearly.

Be very judicious with your time and learn from your time management mistakes.

6. Cut Out the Minutiae

There seem to be two areas of minutiae that come up often when I talk to people or think about what I am doing in my life: media and chores.  Here are some time management strategies to get both of these out of your way.

Media

Your everyday American watches on average 4 hours of TV a day or 28 hours a week. That is over 1,400 hours a year and over 100,000 hours in a lifetime. That is a lot of time just staring at a box. This doesn’t even take into account the amount of time spent at the movie theaters or on the internet.

Now I agree we can learn a lot from television, but the History channel never gets the highest ratings. Most people use those hours to get away and almost go into a trance. I also know that people use the internet for work and other important things like family communication. That is fine.

You just have to ask yourself how much time are you spending and would that time be more productive doing something else. Think of what you can do with those 4 hours a day of TV when you only need about an hour block for a half hour of exercise.  That sounds like effective time management to this guy.

Chores (Picture of baby being thrown by parents)

No matter what Forrest Gump tells you, famous people don’t mow their lawns. Or at the very least they didn’t get successful by doing it.  They became successful because they spent a lot of time building several very specific skill sets. I don’t say you have to be famous or even want that, but if you want to excel at something, find ways to spend more time doing that one thing that will highly impact achieving your desired goals.

I am taking a stab in the dark. You probably don’t want to be a professional dishwasher, lawn mower, dog walker, or house cleaner.  So find ways to move that off of your calendar if possible.

One option is to Delegate to others, whether that is your children or paying others to do those things for you. I understand money can be scarce, but find ways to delegate even a half hour of your week. It helps others to find some work, helps the economy, and will save your time to put in the most effective areas.

With that said, don’t sacrifice time with the people you love. That should never be delegated. For more interesting thoughts on delegation and time management I would suggest you read Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek.

7. Find a Secondary Income

Let’s say these time management tips aren’t addressing the major issues of employment.  Here is a huge step how to improve time management.  One of the smartest things you can do is find a secondary income or a side business. This can be a challenge because there are a lot of scams out there. Some of the most common side businesses are in real estate, stocks, or internet marketing. I have seen many people find success with internet marketing.  Setting up a website, driving traffic to the site, and offering services with a skill set you do well is one of the best ways to create flexibility in your life. I think people die doing a 9-5 if they are just trying to do it to pay bills. Find something you are passionate about and nurture it even if it isn’t going to become your full-time gig.

Don’t buy into the idea that you have to work for someone for the rest of your life. Many of you have learned the effects of a poor economy and what job security you really have.

I don’t guarantee millions or even thousands. You might even lose money for a long time. But then again it might just be something where you can cover a car payment, cover a babysitter cost so you can work out, or utilities. Then it might grow into something more. Up to you!

Here are some avenues you can use to help you get started:

• Copyblogger
• The Keyword Academy
• Chris Brogan,
• John Janstch,
• Jeff Walker

What I like about these people is that they don’t provide a lot of the cheesy long copy, yellow highlighter promises of thousands or millions of dollars. They just teach sound business advice and they have been successful enough that all of them have made a living off of it. If you are patient and looking for a long term business that will really help people, then look at these sites. I put them in order of value they have given to me personally.

You can end up wasting a ton of time working on this type of business. Again you have to be smart and evaluate your use of time appropriately.  Outsource to others if necessary to make sure you can get what you want out of it while not compromising your lifestyle.

8. Cut Out the Bills

Ask yourself a simple question, “What can you go without?” Do you really need that NBA League Pass? Do you need that BMW? What about that timeshare? And those extra 4 dresses at Forever 21?

As we buy more, we have to do more in order to keep it. This seems obvious, but somehow we forget this. We have to work harder and achieve more just to maintain our lifestyles.  I have talked to several CPAs that have mentioned to me how mind boggling it is to them that they see people walk in making six and seven figures, but somehow find a way to get rid of money like it is a crap in their hands.  They save nothing and can’t buy themselves any time for life’s challenges.

I know this for a fact: it is a lot easier to be happy with good health, than it is with a lot of money. I have mentioned I appreciate capitalism as much as the next person. I hang a poster of  Rockefeller on my ceiling and cuddle up to a stuffed doll of Steve Jobs (ok that is hyperbole). But focusing on money for money’s sake doesn’t help your stress levels, your weight, your risk for disease and countless other problems. Stressing about money and work will literally make you sick, raise your cortisol levels, cause you to retain more fat, and in turn be at a higher risk for cardiovascular & heart disease, cancer, advanced aging, and dementia among other chronic diseases.

Just stop for a minute. Think how you can spend your time, and not your money. Time is the valuable commodity here, not money.

Time is the priceless asset unless you are immortal. Don’t know many of those people. You can always get money back, but you can’t get time back. Forget what other people think and don’t believe that the money and lavish lifestyle will automatically mean you are happy. Barry Schwartz can tell you all about the paradox of choice. Live a lifestyle that doesn’t chain you to your job. Instead buy the freedom to enjoy your family, get in quality fitness, life a comfortable lifestyle and have time to make a difference in this world.

Cheesy? Yes. True? Dang right it is.

Look for ways to be minimalistic. Steve Jobs, while highly flawed and petulant, was a great example of this. As Apple went big and he made his initial millions, Jobs saw people around him change for the worse with money. He promised himself that wouldn’t be him. Even after being worth hundreds of billions of dollars, he still had a simple house with no electric gate. He wanted a normal lifestyle for his kids where they could experience what many middle-class kids get to experience growing up.

Happiness, not money, is all that really counts. And you can only be happy if you have the time to do what you want with your life. Keep things simple and your time will be yours to live.

9. Write the Top 5 Time Killers

We talked about daily time killers, but there are general time killers as well. We have already mentioned several in this post, but you may have a few that are completely unrelated to what I have talked about. These are more overarching or macro time killers that might not show up on a daily task list, but take a good deal of your time.

Ask yourself, “What are the biggest areas that suck the most time during the course of the week?”

Write down the top 5 that come to your mind whether they are daily or over a period of time. If it is just 2-3 things, then that is fine. Just write those down. Some examples could be television, video games, social networks, emails, alcohol, cigarettes, or surfing the internet.

Write down what you will do to replace those time killers. These are your time savers. These should be the actions that will save time for you down the road or get you to the lifestyle you want or ways to help others with charity.  Again they can be daily or long term.

Write the the time savers to the right of the time killers in your journal, on a spreadsheet, or some random sheet of paper. If you can replace one time killer with one or two other specific time savers directly, that is great. Mark that by lining those related items up.

Then think about how you can incorporate the time savers more in your life. Write down some ideas and schedule time on your calendar for them. Put these time savers or actions you can take in your Top 5 daily action item list.  The more you can cut out the time killers and include the time savers, the faster you will be toward achieving your goals

Well How About That?

Ok these might not have been earth shattering and your mind might not be melting with these 9 points.  That is fine.  But the truth is that if you take care of your health and deeply evaluate your daily actions, it can go a long way toward being who you want to be.  Hopefully the time you just spent here will help you save time in the future.

About Cade

Cade is the founder of Know My Body. Sorry...no doctor degree, fancy gym, multi-million dollar fitness program, or label as a self-proclaimed health guru of biblical proportions. He is a common guy just like you. Maybe that helps him get you a bit better.

He has worked the past several years trying to get a grasp of "health knowledgeries" from the perspective of a person working a 9 to 5 job and dealing with the normal and not-so-normal challenges that life gives. Visit our About Page to chew on some more knowledge about Cade and how we want to help you at Know My Body.