Who hasn’t dreamt of having more free time? In the midst of a multitude of daily activities and responsibilities, it’s become really hard to find time to progress. And when you come face to face with your overbooked schedule, you want to give up before even giving yourself a chance.

Before getting to that point, here are 3 steps which will help you free up some hours here and there.

Set limits

Some tasks are really time-consuming and most of the time people don’t even notice it. You’ll find hereunder a list of the usual culprits in this area:

• Reading emails
• Watching the TV
• Checking your social media accounts
• Surfing on the internet

By limiting the time you spend doing those 4 activities, you should already have more time to do other things.

One efficient solution is to first delete all notifications from your mobile or your computer, after which you can set limits for how much time you actually spend on each of the 4 tasks and how often (10 minutes 2 times a day for instance).

The same principle goes for all activities which are repetitive. For instance, try grouping household tasks or cooking in one or two days maximum.

Delegate if you can, drop if you must

Examine your daily and weekly activities and reflect on them.

• Is there anything someone else could do for you?
• Could you outsource some of the tasks for a fee?

As a last resort, drop one of your activities.

• What can you stop doing entirely according to your personal priorities?
• What doesn’t have any added value?

My own experience

I personally went through all of these 3 phases during the last 2 years.

I ended up limiting considerably the TV experience, which is honestly one of the best decisions I ever made. With my wife, we decided to delegate some household tasks like the ironing and last but not least, I finally accepted that playing football caused me more hurt than good.

But because figures are better than words, you’ll find below a table with the average time I gained on a weekly basis.

	BEFORE	AFTER	GAIN
TV	10h	3h	7h
Housework	4h	2-2,5h	1,5-2h
Football	6h	0h	6h

 

As you can see, I gained more than 14 hours of free time, which represents 2 hours a day. Up to now, that’s the best way I found to help me get the work-life balance.

Give it a try, enjoy the results!

I suggest you try these adjustments next week and use all your willpower to keep going (yes you’ll need it believe me!). I can guarantee you’ll see how it positively affects your daily schedule.

Don’t forget to share your experiences and encourage others to do the same.