All these things I’ve mentioned are those habits you’ve to make part of your daily routine in order to make sure you’ve a proper balance between your work and your personal lives. You’ve to take the time to internalize them and make them second nature- and it’s not an easy task. Keep at it, don’t give up and you’ll find that, soon enough, you’ve learnt how to manage your time properly!
Other than these routine changes, here are some very specific, very quick hacks you can follow to help you manage your schedule for the day- Use your car-time to be productive
If you’re stuck in traffic, don’t panic. Instead take that time to mentally sort through all that you’ve to do for the day, and make a quick to-do list at the back of your mind. You can even keep a pen and some sticky-notes that you can stick to the dashboard to help you remember! For those of you, who’re not comfortable with working this way, use your car-time to relax instead of getting agitated at the traffic! Listen to music, maybe, or sing along so that your spirits are up when you reach your place of work.
Instead of pushing yourself even harder or sacrificing more time for your career, why don’t you consider using your daily transportation time as an opportunity to get more work done during the day. A lot of people on average drive at least 30 minutes one way just to get to their offices or their businesses. This means a significant amount of time is normally available for more productive uses. While it’s quite obvious that it’s not a good idea to drive and work at the same time, you can consider commuting daily so you can have more time for more productive activities. Here are some amazing ways you can use your daily commuting time to be more productive.
Listen
Whether you ride the bus or a carpool to work or to school, you can use your commuting time to be updated on the latest news or even get a high level overview of a particular video lesson have just watched. A lot of these lessons, also called webinars, give free downloads of the sessions afterwards. After downloading them, you can just as easily take away the audio part for further listening at your own convenient time. You can also try downloading audio versions of books and while on your daily commute, you can listen to these materials. In particular, listen to those that’re relevant to your career, your job, or whatever it’s your studying in school.
The only drawback to this particular way of maximizing your commuting time is that you really don’t have any chances to take notes. But if the material you’re trying to listen to isn’t the top priority, then you could simply make extra time for reading & notes taking later on.
Telecommunicate
You can also catch up on your communication duties by holding teleconferences or debriefings while on your daily commute. This’ll be however, depends on the type of transportation you’re going to ride. As you well know, meetings can usually take at least half an hour or more and would involve at least several of your subordinates, which could grading stuff for productivity. If you’re driving and you’re comfortable using a hands-free set with your phone, you can hold a meeting while you’re on your way to work. This can be particularly useful if you normally have your meetings either first thing in the morning or right before you leave your office or business. While it’s really true that nothing beats face- to-face meetings, there’re meetings that you can afford to conduct through telecommunication. So while you’re on your way to work or from it, why not make the most out of it?
Another productive thing that you can do while commuting is to catch up on all of your pending voicemail. Effective and productive communication isn’t limited to just face to face meetings. Again, if you’ve access to a hands-free set for your cellular phone and you’re either commuting or driving to and from work, you can easily review your pending voicemails without having to take away time from work. As such, can also use of time to make those necessary return calls you’ve been putting off since yesterday. To the extent that you can pull this strategy off efficiently, it’s also the extent by which you can experience more flexibility and productivity by being able to take and make phone calls at your discretion or most convenient time.
Carpooling
While this’s certainly not for everyone, this’s a very good option he happen to live within proximity to all your other coworkers or classmates. All of you can save much time and energy simply by going to and from work or class together in one car. Say there’re four of you carpooling together. Each of you can alternate in terms of driving responsibilities once or twice a week, depending on the rotation. That effectively frees up at least 3 days for each one in terms of driving responsibilities. These three days can also then be used to get extra work done while enjoying the ride. On average, this would mean about two to three hours of extra time for work or study every week. You also then get to save on gasoline expenses too.
Carpooling offers another amazing opportunity to increase productivity, particularly if all your carpool mates happened to be your classmates or your office mates. Your daily commute can then be an opportunity to discuss and read about important things face to face without having to commit yourselves to actual meetings at the office or in school, especially during your busiest hours.
Techno-commute
You can also use technology to your advantage to be more productive during your daily commuting time. You can also either bring your laptop or a tablet especially if you take the bus or similar forms of commuting transportation going to school or to work. By doing so, you can get some work done even while you’re still on the road. It depends on the amount of personal space you can have while you’re commuting. But by just using technology to be more productive during your computing time, you can get the head start on many of your important tasks for the day while on your way to work or school. This would include catching up on your emails & other relatively simple tasks that don’t require much thought. You can also use such gadgets for brainstorming.
Possibly the only disadvantage to switching from private transportation to public transportation is compromising travel time and reliability. For example, if driving normally takes in just 30 minutes to go to work or school, then riding the bus or the train we think you an extra 30 to 40 more minutes. But you can think of it in a more positive way. Instead of spending 30 minutes doing nothing but driving, you’ll be able to spend one hour to an hour and 10 minutes being productive while going to & from work or school. In which case, you’ll actually experience and net gain in terms of personal productivity.
Plan ahead
You can always use our daily commuting time to plan out your day, regardless if you’re using public or private transportation. Before leaving home you can already check your emails so you’ve more or less a good idea of the tasks that you need to plan out for the day. For this purpose, voice memos are very ideal. If you want to have an outline of your day in advance, you can use a voice memo to record your plan activities directly and without having to use your hands for listening to later as you officially start your work or school day. At the end of your day, you can also use this particular method to reevaluate and wind your productive day down and think about what you’ve done well for the day as well as those that you haven’t. You can address any issues that may’ve gotten in the way with your being productive and plan on how to address the remaining challenges tomorrow.
Bike to work
While it may seem like biking yourself to work maybe a big mistake, it may actually be a more productive alternative. Although it’s perhaps a much slower way to get to work or school than, say, driving or taking the bus, it does have its advantages. For one, rush hours in most cities can be very, very bad – carmaggedon! As such, riding a bike can actually be a faster way of getting to work or school, if either isn’t that far away from where you’re living. It’s also a more cost efficient way of going to and from school or work because you don’t need to gas it up. and for those who’re very particular about getting in the regular weekly exercises, biking to work is a very productive and efficient way of cutting down on commuting costs, getting to work on time and exercising regularly.
Word of caution
Just a word of caution, not all of these techniques or methods may work for you. It’ll all depend on your personality, your situations, and the nature of your work as well as your own personal circumstances. Also carefully experiment with these to find out which will work out best for you to optimize your personal productivity while on the road.
