Organizing Your Time: How to Get a 53rd Week Each Year

"I wish I could exercise more, but with my schedule, I really don't have the time."

"I'd love to read a good Dickens novel, but there never seems to be enough minutes in the day."

Every one of us has had some unfinished goal in our lives that was dismissed because we claim we just don't have the time to get it done. Whether it's learning about the stock market, planting a container garden, or writing letters to long-lost friends, we could probably accomplish more by just better organizing the minutes of our lives. Now let's face it, the daily rat race requires us to do certain activities at certain times, quite often with little or no flexibility. If you have to pick up the kids from school at 3:15, then you have to block out that period of time for that specific purpose. On the other hand, there may be parts of our routine where we can be quite flexible, where we have control of when a chore is done, and how long it takes to do that chore. And then there are those little sections of time that we waste every day accomplishing absolutely nothing. Those are the true thieves of our lives, and should be eliminated at all costs. Let's consider a few methods of improvement, and see if we can benefit by organizing our time in a more efficient manner.

1. The Long Shower. Don't misunderstand. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using that hot shower in the morning for a few more minutes of relaxation, taking the time to wake up, and letting the water loosen up those tight muscles. But, at some point in time, a long hot shower becomes a very long hot shower. If you are spending an extra five minutes after you've washed and perked up, that's five minutes that could have been spent making sure you got to work on time, or organizing kitchen items that you will need to cook supper in the evening, or picking up laundry that you would normally do late in the day, etc.

2. Organizing Your Time for News. If you have the habit of reading the morning paper before leaving for work, you can probably relate to this fact. A scan of the front page reveals no new information. You know why? Because you saw all of those same stories on the television news the night before. I'm not saying to drop your newspaper subscription if you make a habit of watching the nightly news on TV, but at least skip on over to the obituaries, the comics, or the Op-Ed page, instead of taking the time to re-hash the stories you already know about. If you spend 7 minutes reading old news, that is 49 minutes per week that did not add value to your life.

3. Shopping without a List. Let's say that, like most people, you take the time to go to the grocery store once per week. You've just finished organizing your refrigerator and pantry shelves, and you're fairly sure you know what items are absent. But...just to be sure, you walk up and down each aisle of the store, allowing those shelved items to guide your thought process, many times tempting you to buy things on impulse. Here's the best idea for organizing your grocery-shopping time. Take a list with you. Doing an inventory of your refrigerator shelves doesn't take nearly as long as walking every one of those food aisles. If you spend an extra 20 minute of time each week at the store because you didn't have a list, it represents over 17 hours of your life that you will never get back.

4. Idle Hands and Evening TV. "I'm going to sit here and watch this one television show, and then I'm going to finish the laundry." Okay. You've probably worked hard most of the day, and there is nothing wrong with enjoying that one-hour hospital soap opera, or those two back-to-back sit-coms in order to unwind a little bit. Relaxing isn't really a waste of time. But, what if you were able to fold those recently laundered bath towels while you watched that show? What if you could sort your sock drawer or polish the silverware while you watched TV? (I'm not suggesting that you figure your taxes or anything else that requires concentration, but there are many chores that can be done without thinking much about what your hands need to do.) If you folded clothes for 15 minutes each weekday during your favorite TV time, you just saved a full 3900 minutes of your life in a year's time.

5. The Occasional Paper Plate. I'm not suggesting that we all throw out the china dishes, or discontinue our use of knives and forks. But there is no reason why, once or twice a week, eating on paper plates with throwaway cups isn't a good idea to save some time. Paper products are not all that expensive, and will at least make the clean-up process a little quicker. If you can save 15 minutes a week by not having to wash your china plates or load them in the dishwasher, you've salvaged another 780 minutes a year. And after all, what's more fun than organizing our time with less work?

Let's stop there and do the math. Saving 1820 minutes per year with shorter showers, 2548 minutes per year by not re-learning the front page news, 1040 minutes per year by shopping with a grocery list, 3900 minutes a year by doing laundry during the evening TV shows, and 780 minutes not having to load the dishwasher as often, you will have freed-up over 10080 minutes without much sacrifice to your quality of life. Those 10080 minutes represent an extra week of time.

Obviously, you will need to perform little tasks in those extra minutes immediately before or after a scheduled duty you can't move (such as work time, or piano lesson time, etc.). But you may discover that it is possible to read War and Peace twelve minutes at a time, if only you do a little organizing, and take the initiative to meet your set objective.