Carrie Baker – The Growth Collective

In this blog post we are talking about ways to get the most out of your time.

I don’t really want to use the words “Time Hacks’, but I guess that’s what I want to give you – Hacks or tools to help you use your time, better. Today we are focusing on your ‘work time’.

My goal in this post, is to help you use the time around your work life well, so you can be more productive and focused. When you succeed in one area of life, it can often translate and overflow into the other areas.

Make the most of your time

“How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.”

James 4:14 NLT

That feels a little confronting doesn’t it?

We don’t know how long we have in this life (thankfully), but that can sometimes make us be a little too blasé about time. We forget that we are just mere mortals, and live like we have all the time in the world.

If you are in your mid life like me, you might be thinking of the things you haven’t done yet, those life goals or dreams you didn’t get around to pursuing yet. The great news is, that you have years yet to do those things.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream and new dream.”

– C. S. Lewis

You can choose to use your time well, and trust the rest of it, to the Lord, the one who knows the number of your days,

Guard your time

“All we have to decide is what do we do with the time that is given to us.”

– J. R. R. Tolkien

Be a good steward of your time. That’s a bit of on old term isn’t it? ‘Being a good steward”. It means being wise and responsible with what you’ve been given. Time is such a limited resource, and unfortunately, we can’t make more of it.

At the beginning of every day, you get to choose how you use those hours. Whether you work to the best of your ability to be efficient, so you can give time to the things you love. Or plod through life not making the most of it… the choice is entirely yours.

There will be so many things that will creep in and take up your time in ways you never intended. If you want to read a previous blog post about being aware of time wasters, you can read it here it’s called, The Disappearing Time Trick.

By choosing to be a good steward of your time, is honouring the Lord who gave you this life. And by choosing well, means that you can spend time not just where you need to, but also where you want to.

Prioritise what is important

“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all
you’ve got.”

– Lee Lacocca

The first place to start with guarding your time, is choosing what the most important things you want to spend it on.

There are of course your responsibilities, your work, raising small people (if you’re a parent or carer), maintaining your home, relationships etc. These things are all important and very necessary.

But if you take a look outside of those things that need to happen every day or week, what other things do you spend your time on?

If you have a hobby you want to take up, or set a goal, maybe even chase that dream you’ve put off… you can’t wait for the time to be right, it never will be. You will need to make space in your life for those things.

At the end of this post, I’m going to give you the task of making a list of the things you want/need to spend time on, and the things that are taking up time and perhaps aren’t actually a priority.

Let’s take a look at the ways you can be savvy with your time…

Focused work achieves more

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

– Paul J. Meyer

Someone I follow, talks a lot about how to use your time well. Dr Benjamin Hardy is an organisational psychologist, who has written many books, is on YouTube and has a podcast. Basically, he is everywhere!

In a recent YouTube video, he talks about ways to increase the quality over quantity of your work, and how you can achieve more in a really focused period of time.

He says when you work at a level of deep focus, and the longer you are focused on a particular task (or related tasks), the better quality of work you’ll produce and the amount you will get done will be greater.

This is also known as ‘Batch Working’. To batch your work together, (whether it’s all your emails, or writing some content) by working on things that are similar or the same, will help you to stay in that place of deep focus.

I decided to try this for myself last week, after watching his YouTube video. As it was half term and everyone was home, I told everyone to leave me to write. I put my ear buds in, put my phone on Focus mode, set a timer and off I went.

I managed to write a whole blog post (complete first draft) and began a second one. I also felt my creativity spark with more ideas. I really enjoyed this method of working, I want to try and work like that more often, as life allows.

Stop distracting yourself

“By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.”

– Christopher Columbus

How distracted would you say you are, if you’re being honest with yourself? I must confess… I can quite distracted at times.

Dr Benjamin Hardy, in his YouTube video, also talked about ‘Task Switching’. This is something you do (we all do) without even realising we’re doing it.

An example of task switching could be this: You’re writing that email, then your phone pings and you look at it, then someone pops their head around the door and starts talking to you, then you come back to your email and then you need to check something…

Life around you is constantly pulling your attention away from the thing you’re doing, and it breaks your concentration. When this happens, it takes longer to bring your focus all the way back to your task. This becomes a habit for most people, and working this way wastes so much of your time.

A study by the University of California, found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to bring you mind back to being fully focused after being interrupted by your phone. That is a long time… think about how many times you check your phone in a day.

When I did that super-focused two hours last week, I made sure that there would be no distractions, and that I had everything I needed. I even tried to minimise the amount of Google searching I did, and kept it all for a separate chunk of time later on.

At the end of this focused time, I took note of how I went. I was aware of how many times I went to reached for my phone, went to check this or look at that. I had a little trouble just focusing on one thing. I know I need to teach myself to get better at NOT task switching while I work.

Bring back Golden Hour

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”

– William Penn

Cutting back the distractions can be difficult, if you work from home or share an office with others.

If you find people distracting, can you request some solid time without anyone talking to you, calling, or walking into your office?

Can you bring in a ‘Golden Hour’, where those around you know that you are having deep focused time? (It could be longer if you can manage that.)

It’s good practice to be able to communicate well to those you work or live with, and be open about what you need. Maybe you’ll start a new trend in your workplace, and it will encourage others to value your time as well as other people’s.

I have a busy office with people I really like, sometimes I find it hard to focus when they’re all in there. Most of my work time, is spent with the families who attend my toddler group across the three days, but there is a lot of admin attached to a large group like ours.

I sometimes have to put my earbuds in, (which are noise cancelling) and I tell everyone that I am ignoring them. This mostly works.

I also changed some of my work hours a while ago, so that I come in to do the bulk of my admin and prep on a Monday, when it’s just me.

I know that there is no ‘one size fits all’ for this, but I want to give you an opportunity to begin thinking about ways you can work better. How can you bring in a ‘Golden Hour’ into your work life?

To Recap:

• Make the most of your time. You get this one life, make it count.
• Guard your time. There are so many ways time can disappear.
• Prioritise what is important. Make time for the things that are important to you.
• Focused work achieves more. Learn how to get into that deep place of focus, by batch working, and produce better quality work.
• Stop distracting yourself. Task switching is a huge time waster we don’t even realise we’re doing.
• Bring back Golden Hour. Why not create a space in your work day, where you request that no one disturbs you?

Make a list of what is important to you, and you want or need to spend time on. Make time to do those things. Recognise those time wasters, and reduce them where you can,

If you’re new around here, I absolutely LOVE to help people to live to be the best version of themselves, and that includes you!

I am all about personal growth, reaching for goals, and being better versions of myself and I love to encourage others on their journey.

Next week in Part Two of Time Hacks For Productivity, we will be talking about making the most of time in your personal life. So be sure to check in for then next weekend.

If you are interest in the YouTube video I mentioned, you can watch Dr Benjamin Hardy here: How to achieve more in one day, than most do in a month .

Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you have a minute, could you like this post for me? And if there is someone you think would enjoy this post, go and share it with them.

Drop me a line in the comments if there is anything you want to share with me, I’d love to hear from you!

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Sending you love friend,

Carrie xxx