6 Tiny Habits That Save You Tons of Time

The #1 excuse I hear over and over again when it comes to rest & recovery is ‘I don’t have time’. And it’s true… In today’s business world it can be quite a challenge to find the time to unwind. But the reality is: most people don’t have the discipline to avoid wasting their most precious resource – time. They are just not very productive (even though always busy).  

"Most people are not very productive."

If you really want to make rest & recovery a priority in your life you need to become a productivity monster. Here are 6 tiny but very powerful habits to get started:

1.   No social media before 12pm

This is probably THE most effective lever to stop wasting time. Don’t check your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and LinkedIN before noon. You’ll be amazed of how much more focused you can work on the stuff that really matters. And if you’ve accomplished your most important tasks, you can still dive into your feeds for the rest of the day.

2.   Answer e-mails in batches

I’m not the first to give you this piece of advice right? But the question is – do you really live by it? Or do you still have your Outlook alerts on showing you every single incoming mail to grab your precious attention? Try to get into the rhythm of answering emails once per hour, or even every two hours, or once before lunch. Educate people to call you if it’s time sensitive (auto responders are a great way for this!)

3.   Note your top3 priorities for the next day at 9pm

This is a piece of advice a got from Tim Ferris (the legendary author of ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’). Tim recommends to note your top3 priorities for the next day on a small piece of paper (yes old-school, but super effective) and circle the most important task. This is the thing you will work on the next day first thing in the morning. It’s a nice routine to end the working day and a great hack to prime your subconscious mind to work on your priorities for the next day while you sleep.

4.   Don’t answer WhatsApp immediately

This habit is especially hard for most of us, since we’re all heavily addicted to the little dopamine kick we get from a WhatsApp message. But as you already know all these simultaneous chats suck a very relevant part of your energy and time and distract you from getting things done that really matter. Here’s the trick: delay your answers to the evening. If you don’t answer immediately guess what happens? The answer to your answer will also come later and so the whole frequency of messages will slow down. Perfect for freeing up precious time!

5.   Take a break every 50 minutes

This one might sound weird – taking a break when you want to get things done faster? YES!!! Latest research shows that our mind needs a quick break every 50-60 minutes to work at its best. And it will take this break no matter if you “officially” give it a break or not. Try it out: do deep focused work without any distraction (not even going to the toilet) for 50 minutes (set an alarm so you don’t need to check the clock every 10 minutes) and then, interrupt it even if you’re in the middle of a thought. Get up move your body, empty your bladder or whatever gives you a quick relief (listening to binaural beats is my favorite biohack to refresh fast). After 10 minutes, get back into the tunnel for another 50 minutes. You get the idea right?

6.   Set a quit time

This habit is a true game changer that I just recently added to my schedule. I learned it from Mel Robbins (author of ‘The 5 Second Rule’) and it instantly lifted my productivity by at least 20%: before you start working in the morning set yourself a fixed, nonnegotiable time to finish your work in the evening. This simple but super effective habit will prevent you from sacrificing your precious recovery time for doing “just this one more thing”. And the coolest thing is you’ll feel great when you finish all your things on time. It’s a cool hack to give yourself a little victory at night. And we all love winning don’t we?!

Stick to these habits and you’ll have enough time for meditation, napping, 4-5 sleep cycles, reading, exercising etc. no matter what.

Thanks for reading :)

How do YOU save time and increase your productivity? Please join the discussion by leaving a comment below.

Chris Surel