Is it possible to expand time? Literally, no. But there is a way to find more time if you’re willing to use these techniques. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 345 Hello, and welcome to episode 345 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. Common phrases you will hear are “I don’t have time” or “I wish I had more time”, and yet you already have all the time you need. The problem is not time, the problem is often the amount of things we want to do in the time we have. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, life was simple. Find food and water, make babies and stay safe. Neglecting either of those three things would result in some serious issues—the biggest of which would be death. Given that human evolution is slow, we are not best suited to deal with hundreds of emails and messages, requests from bosses, finding child care, commuting to and from work and all the other modern-day accessories we’ve chosen to add to our lives. We cannot expand time, yet if we are unwilling to reduce what we want to do, we will feel overwhelmed and that more modern ailment, the fear of missing out, or FOMO. However, there are a few techniques you can use that will give you enough time for the things you want to do if you are willing to try them. But before I get to how, allow me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Giles. Giles asks, Hi Carl, I’ve done your “perfect week” exercise and realise that my problem is I want to do too much. There isn’t enough time in the day. Do you have any tips on fitting in hobbies and still get enough sleep? Hi Giles, thank you for your question. The good thing is you’ve discovered that no matter what you want to do or feel you must do, you will always be limited by the amount of time available. And, now that you’ve done the Perfect Week calendar exercise, you can see what you have left after taking care of your work and family obligations. One of the first realisations about finding time was when I learned of Ian Fleming’s writing routine. Ian Fleming wrote a new book each year from 1952 to his death in 1964. He never missed a year, even in the year he had his first heart attack in 1961. In the early years, Fleming worked For The Sunday Times as their foreign editor, yet he negotiated a two-month vacation each January and February. During those two months, he would fly off to his Jamaican home, Goldeneye and almost from the first day, would begin writing the next book from 9:30 to 12:30. After lunch, he would nap, and then the day’s socialising would begin. Around 4 pm, he would go back to his writing desk for an hour to review what he had written that morning, and that would be it. Four hours a day for six weeks. That produced the first draft of his next book. For the rest of the year, he worked his regular job in London. Dealt with any rewrites and began marketing the book that was being published that year. If you were to analyse how Ian Fleming managed his time, he wasn’t looking at the day-to-day. He looked at the year as a whole. He knew he needed six weeks to write a new novel each year, so he made sure those six weeks were blocked out in his diary before the new year began. That’s just six weeks out of fifty-two. This is similar to blocking time out for your core work. If you know you need ten hours a week to do your core work, hoping you will find the time is not a sustainable strategy. You won’t, so it will be more a case of hoping you will find the time. Those ten hours need to be locked in each week. Ian Fleming would never have written fourteen James Bond novels if he had “hoped” to find the time to do so. He had to find the time and then protect it. You have 168 hours a week and twenty-four each day. Squeezing everything into those twenty-four hours will be tough—almost impossible. Yet, if you were to schedule for the week, where you have 168 hours, things become possible. I see many people anxiously trying to find family time every day. It would be nice if you could do that, but you are dealing with other people and your 6 to 9 pm might not be convenient for them. Instead, you could agree with your family that certain days or evenings are for family time. For instance, my wife and I ensure that Wednesday afternoons and Saturday evenings are ...
