How to make more time in your life

Sure, joining the dawn parade of early risers would automatically create more “time” in our lives, but is skimping on sleep the most effective way to be, well, more effective?

According to Dr Ron Ehrlich, author of A Life Less Stressed – The Five Pillars of Health and Wellness, you don’t need to give up your slumber in order to make your day feel longer. He believes that reassessing how you spend your day is the key to creating more time for yourself, especially as extra hours are only beneficial if they are used wisely.

Increase your shut-eye

Although challenging, Ehrlich stresses that putting aside eight solid hours a day for sleep and rejuvenation is “your non-negotiable, built-in life-support system”.

He believes being rested actually helps build the physical, mental and emotional resilience to make the other 16 waking hours of the day more productive. One way to ensure this is use a smart watch or a free app like to monitor your sleep pattern, so you can see how many hours you’re sleeping and how you might be able to improve on them.

Audit your day

Taking a step back and looking at how you spend your time is one method for seeing where you could improve your effectiveness.

Don’t forget to consider how you engage with technology. Ehrlich believes that we spend too much time responding to “notifications” on email, social media and news. Instead, he recommends switching off all notifications so you gain physical time, but also clear your head in order to focus.

Try keeping an hour-by-hour diary, and look for patterns of “dead time” or time-consuming habits. How could you avoid these in the future?

Understand your values

Working out what’s important to you helps evaluate if you’re spending time on the things that will make you feel satisfied, Ehrlich says. If your week only consists of deadlines and you miss your sister’s birthday dinner, then gaining extra time for work responsibilities won’t make you feel less stressed come Sunday.

Instead, think about what makes you feel happy, healthy and satisfied. Block out time for those things in your diary and keep them in mind when determining if you should say no to invitations and work events. The idea is to save time where you can, so you can spend it doing what you value most.

Determine your priorities

Once your values are set, it’s time to look at your priorities in your day-to-day life. Take a moment to prioritise how you want to spend your waking hours, keeping your values top of mind.

What on your list has to be done today; what can wait until tomorrow; and what can possibly be ignored or even deleted?

Restructure your to-do list in that order, and take a critical look it on a regular basis.

Use this priority ranking to create more “meaningful” time in your life so you can reduce your stress and spend time doing what you value most.