One extra hour.

There comes a point in everyone's life when it is pretty evident that the number of days you have already spent on this planet starts to exceed the number of days left for you on this 3rd rock from the sun. 

It’s also the inflection point when you start to realize that you actually have a sufficient amount of money to take care of all your needs (may not be true for all your wants but reasonably true for your needs) and suddenly time, yes time becomes the most precious and scarce resource you have.

So I went through some interesting retrospection on this topic a couple of weeks ago and decided that I am going to come up with some interesting way to get 4.1% more time which is by adding one extra hour to my day. So instead of 24 hours a day, I am going to enjoy 25 hours a day. 

Here is what I did to get myself the one extra hour

#1 Watch Netflix and Youtube at 1.25x speed. Yes, this was the simplest trick up my sleeve. I do watch an hour or more every day. Watching an hour of Video at 1.25x (yes it’s doable you will get used to it) gives me an extra 12 minutes for every hour spent watching. 

#2 I also decided to combine my love for watching TV with my walking and I now walk on my treadmill in front of the TV. So a 15 minute time boost for every 30 minutes of walks (and Anusuya is very happy about that as well)

#3 Shave alternate days, With the work from home situation and my webcam doing a fairly decent job of softening the image, I can get away by shaving every alternate day. About 5 minutes of saving per day.

#4 How about buying some time? Can one really do that? Of course yes. While I enjoyed spending time in my backyard mowing the yard, I felt it was time to outsource all of it. So easy choice, get the extra hour back to myself every weekend. 

#5 A bit controversial idea though it got me another extra 15 minutes a day was simply to sleep 15 minutes less. So I now pushed my bedtime by fifteen minutes later than usual and use that time to actually read something before sleeping. 

So yes these all add up an extra hour for me to enjoy. Let me know what you think and if you have other creative ideas that you can share.

But wait, it doesn’t end here.

Then one day I decided to share these amazing ideas with my wife, and after a long thoughtful pause, she made a gentle pat on my back. A praise is what I was expecting next, but this is what I got “Amit”, she said with a smile, “If you just stop mindlessly scrolling on your social media, you’ll get a lot more hours back in your life”. I am glad I married a smart woman.

Well no matter whose advice you follow I hope you get to enjoy an extra hour in your life.

-Amit Chopra