I have spent the last 3 years experimenting with almost every productivity and time management tip out there there are five small daily habits some evidence backed and some of my own that I now use to get the most out of my time and balance everything in my busy life if you want my credentials I'm currently working full-time with a 2hour commute I write one newsletter and create one YouTube video each week I exercise every day eat well and get 7 plus hours of sleep at night and still try and make as much time as possible to do the things that I love like seeing friends and reading and working on my personal development the first habit is keeping and using a portable task list and this saves me at least 7 and 1/2 hours a week this might be an unpopular opinion but I genuinely love public transport it's literally a free pass or a $5 pass to getting where you want to go without having to do the driving yourself I would say about 85% of people use this time to scroll on social media and 5% spend at playing games on their phone if this is you it's not your fault and it's what I used to do as well it's because it's the path of leas resistance scrolling and consuming social media content has turned into a norm every time that we are sitting on public transport waiting in the car for our kid or our friend or filling in time in between meetings and classes I like to call these waiting times empty time and there's something that the other 10% of people do with this empty time that allow them to make these small parts of their day more meaning meaningful or more useful they use something that I like to call portable tasks whether they realize it or not a portable task can be used in almost any situation where you have empty time they typically involve things that require only your phone or your brain they don't require deep concentration and they don't require large blocks of time these portable tasks could be work rated they could be personal admin or they could be related to your personal growth and development or even rest and relaxation so every day I drive Drve 15 minutes to the train station and then I take a 45 minute train to work instead of scrolling social media on these train rides I've used the time to respond to messages to create and edit content I'm probably editing this YouTube video on the train right now I've read and saved articles and posts that I wanted to explore more I've even just sat on the train for 45 minutes and let my mind work through a current problem that I'm having or an idea that I've come up with it might not sound like much but let's do the maths if I am taking the train for 45 minutes twice a day 5 days a week that equals 7. 5 hours every week an entire work day this is one whole day that you get back to spend more time with your friends and family or get in that exercise that you can never find time for it's time you can now use to do the needle moving work on your side hustle or Hobbies or maybe it will just give you the opportunity for a bit more self-care and relaxation time that will really help you to perform at your best so some inspiration for other portable task that you could use you could read a book or listen to a podcast you could create your next workout program you could clear out your overflowing camera roll or tidy up your home screen and like I spoke about before you could just use it to let your mind wonder and just decompress from the day if you do genuinely want social media time because it is okay to be on social media you could use this time for that intentionally it's more just about eliminating the Mindless scrolling the key here is to have a constant list of portable tasks that you can pull from so you don't end up on the train or waiting for someone and then spending all of that time deciding what to actually do with the time so create your own portable task list based on your interest priorities and goals what I do is I keep a master to-do list on notion and this houses all of my different to-dos which I then pull from and time block into my days so under this list I have a category section and one of those categories is portable tasks or phone I think it's called called so every time I'm in a situation where I only have my phone on me but I have a bit of spare time then I just sort this notion database into phone tasks only and I pull things from there if you want to make your own one of these lists then you can take the free notion 101 course that I created which I'll pop in the description below a small habit like this is something that contributes massively to a more balanced and fulfilling life by giving you time back and helping you to use your minutes more meaningfully the second habit is eliminating small time wasters which could save you 4. 37 hours per week this is inspired by the weekly Apple screen time report which always makes me question what I am doing with my life I went through a phase where I was racking up almost 7 hours of screen time a day yes I was using my phone to create content and track my workouts and listen to things on Spotify but those things absolutely did not take me 7 hours and I could never quite work out how it somehow got up to that amount because I wouldn't spend an hour straight scrolling on Instagram or Tik Tok I started paying more attention to what I was actually doing with my phone and I came to realize that it was all these little 5 to 10 minute Scrolls that somehow added up to hours each day it was the ones where I would just finish a work and reward myself with a little scroll on my phone or where I didn't know what to do next and so I would procrastinate by scrolling on my phone even when I just got home from a long day and would just spend 5 minutes in the car before going inside just just doing a small scroll they really don't feel like much but all it takes is 10 of these little 5 minute Scrolls to waste almost an hour of your day and it's not just our phone that's the issue because these small time waster are absolutely everywhere deciding what to eat for lunch or dinner can add up to 70 minutes a week going back and forth on what to wear each day can add up to 35 minutes a week looking for a closer park for 10 minutes instead of just parking 100 m away and walking can add up to 70 minutes a week and things like driving all the way home and then going back to the gym instead of just driving directly to the gym eliminating that saves me 80 minutes a week once you become aware of these things they start appearing absolutely everywhere so the first step to getting your time back is to identify these time wasters I did this just by starting to become aware of what I was doing as I went throughout the day what are you doing repeatedly that you really don't need to what things are taking extra time that you could eliminate and how can you make the things that you do regularly slightly more efficient once you've gained this awareness then you can start to implement strategies to reduce the time wasting so for example with my bad Instagram scrolling habit I would just move the Instagram app on my home screen every week this brought my conscious mind into the picture when I was trying to look for the app and gave me a moment to question whether I actually wanted to use it another thing that I do is meal prepping because this eliminates the decision making when I'm trying to work out what to eat for lunch and dinner another massive thing was creating a capsule wardrobe to make choosing my clothes each day so much simpler so identify your time waster think about some different strategies that you could use to eliminate these or to reduce your bad habits and start giving yourself back the time to do more meaningful fulfilling things habit number three is one of my absolute favorites and this is habit stacking which has saved me at least 5 hours a week if you feel like you don't have time for personal development or learning a new skill or exercising or even just responding to messages then this one is for you habit stacking has been the single biggest tool that I have used to prioritize my personal growth and learning while living an extremely busy life there's a lot of different definitions for this but my favorite way to explain this is combining a passive activity with an active one passive activities are normally physical ones things like walking doing the dish es working out or meal prepping active activities are mental so things like listening to a podcast taking a phone call writing or thinking about something now multitasking on two passive or two active tasks doesn't work you can't run and meal prep at the same time and you can't write an email and respond to a message at the same time but habit stacking one of each of these does work for example I wrote the outline for this you you video while I was walking I create content and respond to messages while I'm on the train I listen to podcasts and audio books while I'm at the gym or meal prepping or washing the dishes these are really simple activities that can solve the problem of feeling like you never have enough time in the day or having your personal growth always put in the do later pile you are sitting right now with a portable device in your hands that you can do absolutely anything on this makes habit stacking one of the easiest ways to implement more productivity into your life and manage your time better so experiment with some different forms of habit stacking and work out which combinations work best for you and your goals habit number four is more of a mindset shift but it's realizing that not all times are created equal this is a big one when I first realized this my life completely changed and I have never looked at time planning or productivity the same way again I used to look at my mental capacity and focus as this straight line that stayed constant throughout the whole day I thought that doing a task at 7:00 a.
m. would take the same amount of time feel just as difficult and be done to the same quality as if I did that task at 700 p. m.
turns out it doesn't quite work that way our bodies go through natural Peaks and dips in concentration energy and focus throughout the day these Peaks and dips depend on our sleep and wake times our chronotypes so whether you're an early bird or a night owl as well as things like our habits and our lifestyle and the way that we look after our health realizing this made me start planning my day around not just my time but also my energy and focus levels I used to be a 5:00 a. m.
