Time is by far the most valuable resource we have and I am not sure how many ‘times’ I hear it and have even said it myself; “I wish I had more time in the day”.

Yet what many of us fail to realise is that it not something that will come with ease but we can actually create more time in our day. That is by consuming less.

Consuming? Completely filling ones mind and attention!

One must, when consuming, do nothing else but place their attention on that that they consume.

Sounds crazy, funny, whatever, stick with me here.

We are surrounded by thousands of message each day, advertising, marketing, media, we are bombed by this stuff. Some we can easily ignore others we can easy become absorbed in.

Think about those things that you consume. Books, Facebook, T.V., magazines, twitter, email upon email, texting, snap-chat, YouTube, video the list goes on.

And a lot that we consume is cleverly created to ensure it becomes a habit, meaning we consume more. For all you Facebook addicts you know what I am talking about.

With technology ever improving it becomes even easier to consume. We get pop up notifications, rings, bells, alerts for just about every thing we are subscribed to.

“You’ve got mail”, immediately you stop what you do and check your inbox. Facebook notifications come in all day. How many hours of T.V do you watch a day and what is the reward?

So it’s easy, it is life!

Here is how to avoid wasted consuming time. How to get back some hours in your day to allow you to spend some more time to focus on your passions.

Firstly write down those things you spend a lot of time on that perhaps you enjoy but don’t give you much in return. Facebook, T.V. emails etcetera. We can still do these things but we need to make time for them.

Secondly write down those things you need or want to complete or achieve everyday. Try and build them as your daily themes.

For me at the moment my themes are health, creation (writing), learning (read/listen), career, family and fun. Put down whatever it is you like, we must make time for it.

Now we can schedule our day. I understand for some this will be incredibly hard and probably even more of a challenge to follow. Practice and perseverance makes perfect.

Some of us find it difficult to have a disciplined routine and for some of us routine may actually be counter productive for them. Typically these types may be arty types, people that work well with chaos, clutter and are generally disorganised.

Now we need to break our day into blocks of time. The best and most productive block really depends on the task you are doing and also your personality type.

Ideally around 90 minutes would be ideal for maintaining attention and maximising productivity. However this could be 60 or 120 minutes with anything outside this probably being wasteful. I notice I get agitated after 2 hours non-stop on the one task.

Now you can plot your day. What will you be doing for each hour in the day? Do you wake at 5am or 9am? When you wake what is on your list for the first 90 minutes.

Once you schedule your themes, those important daily tasks and activities then you can schedule time around these for all those activities that you enjoy but do not lead you in the direction of you ultimate goals and dreams.

What do you do from 9am to 12pm, remembering that to break that into blocks you could take a 10-minute walk, have a coffee break, do some star jumps, reenergise and start the next session.

Now your day should look like a stack of blocks, I like to colour code mine.

Now the next part is critical, you need to work to your schedule. Follow it closely and with discipline, there will always be obstacles that pop up and that’s fine.

It is only those obstacles that require serious attention that we should break schedule for. All the others are simply annoyances, reasons for us to procrastinate, and must be avoided.

Turn off all notifications, put you phone on silent, let others now you are unavailable. Remove all distractions.

See what happens is that many of us set out to do a task but easily become distracted by social media, phone calls, emails and the 3 hour project only got half that times attention due to all the toing and froing.

This is key. If you really want to be inspired more by time management and efficiency have a read of Tim Ferriss’s book the Four Hour Work Week. This man is a legend at it.

When you block your day like this and follow the schedule, as closely as possible you will suddenly find the day becomes easier as you are no longer chasing your tail.

Structure and routine are simply the best remedies for efficiency in my world. Ideas shared here are a great start but there is much, much more in becoming efficient.