Never have any time? Let’s find your time leaks! 

On this episode of Rosie’s Rituals let’s look into why we have absolutely no time and find out exactly where you’re leaking precious time and energy. As the old saying goes… ‘check yourself, before you wreck yourself!’, is that an old saying or just a stupid phrase I used at school?! Anyway…

Do you ever feel like you get into bed at night, totally exhausted and think what the hell happened today?! Yeah, me too! Some days will feel super productive and like you’re on top of everything and then other days you’ll be super busy all day and don’t really achieve anything and feel totally zapped. 

It’s great to have productive days and also totally fine to have unproductive days but it’s important to keep track of what’s happening overall. If you’re trying to start your dream business and having many more unproductive days, then that dream will just be kept further away from your reality. 

Rate your current life

First things first, it’s super important to access your current situation and day-to-day life to find out where you’re happy and where you’re falling short.  

You need to look at the eight core categories below and rate each area out of 10. 1 being terrible and 10 being absolutely fabulous! 

1. Family
2. Relationship
3. Health and fitness 
4. Mental health 
5. Environment
6. Work and career 
7. Finances 
8. Fun and adventure 

This activity will give you an overview of the main areas of your life and how happy you are in each. You can then take this information later to curate new routines and habits to improve the low scoring areas and maintain the high scoring areas. 

I have developed a ‘check yourself before you wreck yourself’ workbook that is designed to help you optimise your time and it has a whole page dedicated to this activity with guides and prompts. You can check it out here. 

Track every waking hour 

Now you’ve rated the main areas of your life, you need to document everything you do in a day by the hour. This might sound like a mammoth task but it’s not with my tracking sheets that are available in the workbook here. 

It’s important to look at every hour of your day and be super honest about how you spent that hour. Be sure to include things like scrolling social media or watching TV as you might be surprised how much time is taken up by these types of activities. 

Being organised is important for this task as you can easily get into the full swing of your day and forget exactly what you’ve been up to all day. I’ll list the different ways you can do this below; 

1. Old fashioned pen and paper! Start by listing the date and then jotting down each hour in a column, leaving space to write what you done in that time. Once you’ve completed this, review the day and jot down any patterns you notice. 
2. Use the notes app on your phone: as above, jot down the date and then list each hour in the day in a list form with space to fill in what you’re up to. Review at the end of the day and jot down any patterns. Top tip: Ask ChatGPT or your preferred AI tool to review and identify any patterns for you. Example search question: Identify any patterns in my day and what is taking up lots of time from this data. Then copy and paste in your log for the day. 
3. For the laptop queens: you can set up an excel spreadsheet in the same format as before with categories or pre populated options to take and measure your use of time. There is a great spreadsheet included in the ‘check yourself’ pack available here. 

You’ll need to repeat this activity daily for 2 weeks to give you a really in-depth review and you’ll be able to identify your routines, patterns and most importantly where you’re wasting time. 

All the above trackers are available as resources in the life audit workbook.

How to find your energy leaks 

Once you’ve completed the hourly tracking task, you’ll be able to identify exactly how you’re spending your time. You might be surprised to see how much time is spent on unnecessary tasks or see exactly where you need more support or structure to automate or slimline tasks. 

If you can see that you’re spending lots of time scrolling on social media, think of ways you can minimise spending time like this, for example log out of your social media apps to avoid using them on autopilot and set dedicated time to check your socials. 

If you find you’re spending lots of time tidying up, are you able to put any new processes in place, for example clearing your coat hooks so you can hang up coats as soon as you walk in the door. Or share the load with those you live with by creating a weekly rota to share out the chores. 

Design your month, week and days for success 

Now you have rated your life, tracked your time and identified patterns, you should feel much clearer on your exactly what you get up to and where you’re wasting precious time. 

Don’t ponder on this information, use it to your advantage and take your life to new heights! Curate your month, week and days to work for you and to get you closer to your dreams! Look at how you can plan out your week to achieve your goals, have fun and be organised. Check out my weekly planner here.

Ensure that you’re taking at least 2 actions per week towards your goals, even if it’s small actions, they compound overtime and make a big difference. 

Ensure that you’re taking action to reduce time spent on things that don’t matter to you and focus more on the things that do. For example if one of your goals is to be more healthy, take time to prepare for your meals on a slower day and batch cook healthy meals to grab out of the freezer on days that you don’t have time to cook. 

Routines/habit stacking 

Now you really know what is going on, exactly where your time is being spent and your week is designed to smash your goals and keep on top of life! It really does feel amazing to be on top of things and working towards your goals. 

The ultimate hack to really making this work is to set up your environment for success. Get rid of the clutter and any mess that makes day to day tasks feel like a burden and get that mental load taken away. Decluttering is such a great way to clear your space and also your mind, if it doesn’t spark joy either give it away or get rid! Do you want to start spending time working on your new business? Then have your laptop out and ready to go, so every time you have 10 minutes free, you can hop straight on and get through things. 

Have you got any little habits that you can stack new habits on top of? For example do you go round and tidy the house before you go to bed? Could you take the time to take vitamins once you’ve finished to work towards a health goal for example. Or could you cleanse your face after brushing your teeth in the morning to get closer to a glow up goal? Or could you jot down your top 3 priorities for the week ahead to get a business up and running after you’ve done the washing up? These tiny habits build up over time and have a compound effect! I first learnt about this technique in the book Atomic Habits written by James Clear, I’d highly recommend reading it!

Look at how far you’ve come 

After identifying your time leaks and planning out your time to achieve what really matters to you, look back at how you rated your life before and repeat this exercise monthly. 

See where you have improved or where needs more focus and build it into the following month. Use this exercise to direct how you need to spend your month, weeks and days to achieve happiness. 

Check yourself before you wreck yourself!

In summary you need to take the below steps to get on top of your life and find hidden time you didn’t know you had: 

1. Review your current life and discover the areas to improve and maintain
2. Track every waking hour for two weeks
3. Identify time wasting habits and gain back precious time 
4. Curate a weekly plan to start achieving your goals and happiness
5. Set up routines and start habit stacking 
6. Each month review how far you’ve come and readjust your planning to keep improving 

This takes a little time commitment initially to get going but once you put in the work after the first couple of weeks, you’ll be able to take your life to new heights. 

I can assure you, you have more time than you think and you can set up habits and routines that help you get back time. 

As mentioned throughout this post, I have designed a digital workbook that covers off each of these areas in full detail with exercises and resources for each step, to guide you through the process and make this an effortless process for you. Check out the ‘Check yourself before you wreck yourself’ digital workbook and resources here. 

Please let me know how you get on with this in the comments or email me at [email protected], I’d LOVE to hear how this changes your life and what you can achieve with all your extra time. 

As always, thank you so much for reading.

Rosie xx