Recently we talked about how you can make replacing your habits easier and what adjustment techniques could be helpful. However, they will always be second best to the ability to have your cake and eat it too. That is, to preserve your nuturing routines and keep them intact. But how can you create extra time? This is exactly what we will look at more closely today.

Step Zero: X-Ray

So, where should we start? There is only one thing more important than where we want to go, and that is understanding where we are at our starting point. The first step, hence, should be exactly that: understanding the baseline. No matter how urgently you have to implement changes in your daily routines, try to find some time to really understand the body over which you will be performing the optimization surgery magic. If you are pressed for time, take at least one typical day and use your (honest) imagination to extrapolate. Ideally, though, try to find a typical week for this exercise. Then do a special kind of journaling. You might find the following template useful:

Go through the whole day and capture as much as possible. Technically, you are after meaningful chunks of time. Practically, you might want to include the tiny black holes that are devouring your time at a marginal pace but continuously through the day. Once you are done, calculate the whole time spent based on categories. This will give you a good understanding of where you currently are. Also, this will be an excellent congruency test: how closely does what you do day in and day out match what you say is impornant to you?

Step One: Let’s Discuss Your Options Priorities

Once you’ve gathered an understanding of how your calendar really looks and where you are starting your journey, the question of where you want to go comes to the fore. In a general case, you want to keep as many habits as possible that support, nurture, and help you develop in the desired direction. They should represent your agenda. Most likely, they are going to be cornerstone habits as you will want the virtuos cycle effect such habits generate. All in all, your target is fortifying the habit structure so that it can effectively and efficiently hold your life during the turbulences. You might ask yourself: “If I only had this much time, what would be one thing I would want to be able to fit in?” With that question you can allocate the time you have on your hands. Alternatively, you can assign priorities – either within a range between, say, 1 and 3, or increasing the difficulty level, so that each activity receives a unique priority. This step will be a sound preparation of what will happen next.

Step Two: Cut the Fat

Once you’ve done this groundwork, the next step will be staggeringly simple. It will be staggeringly simple, and just as hard. Based on your priorities, you can identify and discontinue activities and habits. You are going after routines that are not actually nurturing you but rather devour time, drain resources, or are simply swept over from somebody else’s agenda. If your priorities assignment exercise hasn’t helped you to shed the light where you could shred some fat, you can help yourself with additional questions.

Are you participating in activities and routines of your dear ones that could be stopped forever or at least put on pause during your transition period? Could reshuffling who does what in your household bring relief? Furthermore, could you “buy” more time by opting for meal delivery and thus skipping cooking? Could shopping online and having items delivered give you an extra breathing space? Some revelations may end in difficult discussions and decisions, but going through them once will give you a lot of leverage mid- and long-term.

The usual suspect – is there something you can gain by limiting or even stopping altogether the usage of social media? (Deleting some apps from your cellphone or logging out from some apps on your laptop can work wonders).

The point is that there might very well be some fat to cut from the “I didn’t even realize it was costing me that much time and wasn’t actually that keen on doing it anyway” territory before a part of your load-bearing construction is sacrificed, making you feel like you’ve just performed an auto-amputation.

Step Three: Surgery

However, what has taken you from A to B will not take you from B to C. There might be situations where you will have to change something about your nurturing cornerstone and otherwise good habits. After having gone through the exercises of the previous steps, you will have a much better picture of the interconnections between your isolated habits and their individual roles in the whole structure. With that knowledge you can be much wiser about which routine to drop. As such, you can go after habits that are rather isolated than interconnected and still preserve your cornerstones. All in all, and especially with your cornerstone habits, dimming down or shortening your routine is always a better option than cutting them out altogether. If you realize you don’t have an hour as you used to but only 20 minutes, try to find a 20-minute routine and stick with it for the time being. Surprisingly, you might even find this forced replacement insightful and generally beneficial for overall performance.

On a side note – I had to go through this process myself a couple of months ago: I accidentally knocked myself out while training somersaults and landed in a hospital, making a very effective impression of Long John Silver there. A hilarious story – I should tell it to you sometime.

Finally, even if you are not in the process of changing your routines and habits right now, I do recommend going through this exercise to gather some understanding of how your life is currently sliced, diced, and organized. If nothing else, it will provide you valuable insights as to what extent your agenda reflects your priorities. There might be some revelations waiting for you! Do give me a shout if you want to chat about your discoveries.