How to be more productive and add more time in your life

Imagine I magically added hours of time to your day.

You would have more time to do what you love, whether that is relaxing, time with family, reading, working, etc..

Well this is your lucky day!

In the next minute or so, I will share hacks that will add HOURS to your day, every day.

1. Install a Facebook feed-blocker and the StayFocused Chrome extension.

Since I’ve installed a feed-blocker, I have saved AT LEAST 30 minutes a daythat I would have otherwise spent on Facebook.

As for StayFocused, I have put 10 minute time limits on Instagram, where I could otherwise spend north of 2 hours a day scrolling around [check settings in your iPhone. It tells you exactly how much time you’re wasting on there..]

I also delete my social media apps on my phone when I want to be extra productive and therefore force myself to only access them from a desktop.

2. Put your phone in another room when you start working or come home.

Make it hard for you to access your phone. Put a physical barrier and engineer your strategy around having to exert effort before you can access your phone.

As humans we are wired to be lazy, so you are much less likely to actually grab your phone.

3. Eat the same breakfast every day and plan out your outfits the night before.

An example of an outfit I planned the night before. I pretty much do this every night and tend to stick to similar colours, patterns, brands to make my life easier.

Stop wasting a finite resource (your mental energy) on trivial decisions such as breakfast or your outfit of the day. Systemize it by eating the same thing every morning and having your clothes laid out the night prior.

As you might have observed, a lot of top performers (think Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, etc.) are known to wear repetitive outfits, so as to minimize the riskof decision fatigue.

4. Instead of ironing your shirt/dress, hang it in the bathroom while you take a shower.

The steam in the shower will make your outfit look freshly ironed while you’re taking a shower. If that’s not multi-tasking, I don’t know what is.

5. Turn off all desktop notifications and check your emails 2x a day at predetermined times.

There is (almost) no email important enough to sacrifice your mental focus on constantly checking your inbox. It takes our brains about 20 minutes to refocus on whatever task you were engaging in before.

Now imagine you check your emails 15x during work hours (this is a conservative estimate for most people..). Waste of brain power and time huh?

6. Journal for 5 minutes every night.

Get everything out of your head and don’t let it simmer in your subconscious mind when you’re sleeping, as this can affect the quality of your sleep, especially if it’s daily stressors or negative situations.

Don’t think about what your write, don’t worry about grammar or structure and simply write. No thinking, just let your brain and pen do the work.

You really can’t believe how much this simple trick will enhance your overall quality of life until you try it for yourself.

It’s incredible.

7. Listen to a podcast/audiobook while you’re in the shower/getting ready/commuting.

Don’t have time to read? Want to stimulate your mind, but you have a thousand things to do? Utilize technology and download a bunch of educational/strategic podcasts/audiobooks and listen to them whenever you are getting ready/commuting.

The compound effect will ensure that this small habit will pay large dividendsin the long-run, I promise.

8. Buy a bunch of thank you/Christmas/birthday cards and make it a habit to send out at least 1 of them to someone in your life every month.

This will improve your relationship and make you a better human, overall.

Also, you’ll always have a birthday card on hand when you forget to buy a present.

9. Got a bunch of keys that look similar? Paint the top with nail polish and never have the problem of identifying the house key again.

I didn’t come up with this idea, but a friend of mine told me when I was in high school.

Ever since then, I have never struggled to distinguish between house, office, garage, etc. keys again in my life. :)

10. Put an alarm on your phone that reminds you to get ready for bed 30 minutes prior.

If you’re anything like me, you tend to procrastinate on your bed time. To mediate this, I set an alarm 30 minutes before I have to sleep to remind me of the sleeping habit I am trying to cultivate.

So far, this has been working surprisingly well for me and allows me to get enough sleep every day (which is one of the overall healthiest things you could do for yourself).

11. Don’t keep any candy/junk food in the house.

Again, make it hard for you to cheat or engage in a bad habit.

Do not merely rely on your willpower, as this is ineffective and drains you of vital mental energy. You will eventually fail, because you’re human.

When it comes to junk food, the best strategy is ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

If you follow some/all of these simple, yet effective tactics, you will easily gain hours in your day and actually accumulate the arguably most important non-renewable resource you have in your life - time.