It’s a known fact that we each have 24 hours per day. You can be the prime minister of a country or the loitering teenager at the mall, nothing can change this fact.

Like every rigid rules in the universe, this too can be bent. Here’s 10 method to steal an extra 3 hours from the time bank.

1) Wake up early
Try to find your minimum hours of sleeping needed. If for example you sleep for 7 hours every day, try to wake 15 minutes earlier. Keep reducing it slowly but only do that when you are comfortable with the new habit. Don’t force it.(1 hour recovered)

2) Solve problem while sleeping
What you need to do is simple. Just before you go to bed, plan what you are going to do tomorrow. Try to be as detailed as you can. It is theorized that most problems were solved when we are asleep by our subconscious mind. Imagine going through the day smoothly without having to stop when problems occur. Imagine how much time we have saved.

A more extreme method is to see the future one hour at a time. (0.5 hour recovered)

3) Filter television
Preferably just stop watching. But if you must, only watch what you want to watch. Check the schedule on what’s interesting and put that on your personal schedule. Watch ONLY that. Do not watch television just because you have nothing to do. (0.5 hour recovered)

4) Cut small talk
This is quite critical. You cut too much you are antisocial, you cut too little and it’s just pointless.

When you’re on the phone, try to have something in mind on what you want to know or tell. Unless that person is family or your loved ones, I don’t see any reason why we should be on the phone more than 30 minutes.

That goes the same thing to email, IM and now twitter 🙂 (0.5 hour recovered)

5) Walk faster
This trick is actually introduced to me when I was in high school. As juniors we are forced to walk fast to go to places. I hated it then.

Now however, I find it quite efficient to walk fast. I exercise and most importantly I save quite a significant amount of time compared to walking slowly. (0.25 hour recovered)

6) Avoid repetitive work
Your time is gold. If you need to go buy groceries, try to plan your list and avoid having to go twice. Yes, sometimes we forget. That’s why it is recommended to print out a list of things you always buy. Whenever you are going out, check out all the items in the list first. (0.25 hour recovered)

7) Delegate
Delegation is an art really. To know which task can be given to other person to do, and which to do ourself. The thing is, tasks are really never ending. Start delegating simple tasks like typing, proofreading etc (0.25 hour recovered)

8] Dedicated days
I have a tray on my desk where I put all my receipt or carbon copy of my paid bills in. Those are supposed to be filed. However if I file every receipt everytime I receive one, I will spend a lot of time just doing my filing. So I dedicate one day of the week to do filing.

You can do the same to maybe spring cleaning, or snail mail corresponding etc. Assign one day to do all of that. (0.1 hours recovered)

9) Scrap the seconds
By scrapping I mean to appreciate every seconds of your day. Imagine that seconds are like $1. What would you feel if you are losing $1 every second. Learn speed reading, read only important news in the newspaper (Do you need to know how depressed an actresss is?). Recover as much as possible. (0.1 hours recovered)

10) MOST IMPORTANT : Know how to spend the extra time
Even if you have 100 hours per day, it would be meaningless if you don’t know what to do with it. This is why it is very crucial for you to know 3 things before you start with the list.

• What do you really want in life? (loved ones, religion)
• What are your priorities? (family, job, hobbies)
• What trivia things that you need to do anyway (email lost friends, Jar Of Life technique etc)

By doing item no 10, you are basically recovering the sum of it all – 3.2 hours. Which generally means if everyone else has 24 hours, you have 27.2 hours a day!

– I wonder –
Any other tips to recover that seconds?

——— Personal Note ———-
NetworkBloggingTips is actually putting up a challenge to come up with a list-type post. This entry is my submission to the challenge. Feel free to join in.

In the spirit of the challenge. Here are some of my most recent list-type articles. More of them here

• 4 Signs You Are SIB Immuned
• 7 Ideas on How To Live Differently Everyday
• 10 Motivational Scripts Specifically For Student
• 7 Situations You Should Memorize How To Respond
• 6 Sure Tricks To Overcome Fear

Enjoy!

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