How to gain an extra hour every day

How often have you wished you had a bit more time each day? With a bunch of projects that I’m trying to juggle (and an inability to say “no” to more), that’s something I frequently wish for.

Well, I’ve discovered a way to gain more than an hour everyday. I’m sad to say, it’s a fairly recent realization that I wish I knew about years ago.

I was recently analyzing how I spend my time and I discovered: When I sit down to do my work, I know what I want to work on but it usually takes me about 5 minutes to actually get into the work. The first 5 minutes is taken up with clicking to open documents, opening the appropriate windows in my web browser, and thinking about what I want to do on the project. It’s not that I dawdle on these parts of the project, it’s just that I’m not up to full-speed/full-production mode just yet. I’m just getting off the runway, so to speak.

It led me to wondering what would happened if I shortened the runway. How would I do that?

And after some trial and error, here’s what I’ve found: When planning the details of my day (the night before), I need to do more than just say “At 3pm I want to write a blog post for TheHappySelf“. Instead, I need to push deeper and say: “At 3pm, I want to write a blog post for TheHappySelf about the 3 challenges you face when setting health goals.” I also note mentally what documents or windows I need open on my browser. In other words, I figure out all of the things that used to take me the first 5 minutes of the project. In effect, I’m shortening the runway and getting to that point of productive critical mass sooner.

The result is an extra hour of work for me every day. At least. Here’s how the math plays out: If I start 12 projects (i.e., 12 half-hour projects over a 6 hour workday, for example, which isn’t that unusual for me), and each project used to burn the first five minutes, I have regained an hour in the day. Simple!

The cost of gaining back this hour? Maybe 10 minutes of planning the day before. That’s a great return on investment!

Of course it might vary for you — maybe you have 6 1-hour projects in your 6 hour day (and you’ll regain half an hour) or 24 half hour projects in a 12 hour day (and you’ll regain 2 hours). Whatever. If you can save five minutes on each project (and that is entirely feasible with a little advanced planning), you can win back a huge amount of time in the day.

Posted on February 4, 2012