The 25-hour day: how to find seven extra hours each week

When you’re asked: ‘How are you?’ do you answer:
a) busy

b) flat out, or

c) frantic

There are other options, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard any of them that I can’t remember what they are.

If you’re stuck on treadmill set to ‘max’ with an ever-increasing incline, pushing yourself to keep going, hoping you won’t be flung off the end of the machine – you’re not alone!

The Australian Work and Life Index found that working mums are more harried and pressed for time than ever before. We know we need more ‘me time’, but how can we fit another thing into the twenty-four hours we’ve already crammed full of work, family, friends, study, multiplying loads of washing, supervising school projects, the taxi service we provide for our kids and crawling into bed after the day is done, thinking, ‘I just need one more hour in the day...’

It can be easier to find that extra hour than you think! Try working through this ten-minute exercise:

How will you spend your extra ‘me time’?

When you’re given a pay rise, it can be easy to expand into the added income unless you have a goal in mind – like saving for a particular holiday. It’s the same with our time. We fritter it away if we don’t have a plan in mind for how we want to spend it.

If you had an extra hour each day to spend on yourself, and you weren’t allowed to use it for work or housework, how would you fill it? Make a mini ‘bucket list’ of all the things you’d love to do, the activities you used to enjoy and the experiences you long to try.

Pick the one that excites you most and write this at the top of a fresh page, with two columns drawn underneath.

Stack on the pleasure

If you found time for this activity, what would it give you? What are the positive spin-offs? Would you feel calmer if you found time for this? More stimulated, centred, rewarded, patient, interesting or happy?

If you felt these things, how would this affect those around you? What impact would it have on your work? What would your family notice about you?

Jot these points in the right-hand column.

What’s the cost of not doing this?

On the left, write down what’s going to happen if you don’t make time for this activity. How will this affect you? How will you feel if things stay the same as they are now? What will your mood be like? How will you interact with others? What will your concentration levels be?

If you don’t give yourself time for this activity and keep plugging on at the pace you are now, what is it going to cost you in the short, medium and long term?

How have you been spending your spare time?

Draw a large outline of a human eye, with the pupil in the centre and a smaller circle to one side, representing a ‘blind spot’.

Think of the last seven days. What have you been focussing on in your spare time? Favourite TV programs? Facebook? Surfing the internet? Jot down these activities in the centre of your ‘eye’.

Now, think of the activity you ‘don’t have time for’. Is it in your focus at all, or in your blind spot?

Look at what’s been consuming your attention. Compare the benefits of these activities to those you’ve identified for the new activity. Which is a better use of your time?

Cut the cake a different way

Recognise that you can allocate your spare time in several different ways. Shift some of the less important time-wasters out of your near focus and into your blind spot, freeing up extra time.

Bring your desired activity front and centre in your focus. Take your diary and block out set times for this over the next seven days.

Tell your partner and kids about it and get them on board by encouraging them to do the same thing for an activity of their choice. Balance your individual desires as a family.

Be 100% present

When it’s time for you to enjoy your extra hour of ‘me time’, absorb yourself in it 100%

Set aside all thoughts of ‘what else I should be doing’ and truly enjoy this gift to yourself.

By learning to live ‘deep’ - not ‘fast’ – we’re setting our treadmill at a comfortable pace.