4 Tips for More Time In Your Life
/Who needs more hours in the day? 🙋♀️ I know I do. Getting more done with less is what many of us are looking for. Here are 4 research-based tips to give you more time.
Time Block
Take Breaks
Bring Joy into Your Day
Evaluate Your To-Do List
Time Block: Putting your tasks into your calendar in blocks of time is called time blocking. This technique allows your brain to focus on one task at a time. In recent years multitasking has become the norm. Interestingly, research from the American Psychological Association shows that multi-tasking actually increases the amount of time that it takes to complete a task, especially if the task is complicated.
Take breaks: Taking breaks in a day reduces something called decision fatigue. When you focus too long on a problem, research shows that your ability to make decisions is not as accurate. In addition, in a study done at the University of Illinois showed that even brief breaks from a task can improve one’s ability to focus on that task. Plus, these pauses allow the decision-making part of your brain (your pre-frontal cortex) a thinking break which has been shown to make your working time more productive.
Bring Joy into Your Day: Adding happiness to your day has actually been proven to make people 13% more productive. A study by Oxford University in 2019 showed that happy workers do not work more hours– they are simply more productive with their work. So, do things that bring happiness into your day!
Evaluate Your To-Do List: Most of us have too much on our plates. Many times, we do this to ourselves! Take a look at your overall tasks and use these three questions to evaluate them.
Do you need to do it?
If you do not need to do it does it bring you joy or add value to your life?
If you do not need to do it and it doesn’t bring joy or add value to your life, how do you stop doing it?
I challenge you to try at least one of these! Last month I worked hard on #4. This month I am focusing on 1 &2. Which one do you want to try to put into practice in your life?
References
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-10-24-happy-workers-are-13-more-productive
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3470734#
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018033108
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110208131529.htm
https://www.apa.org/topics/research/multitasking
Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
