Hi I’m Elizabeth and I have 8 days in my week.

Who hasn’t ever said “there are only 7 days in a week! 24 hours in a day!” when faced with the prospect of too much to do and not enough time to do it? There just isn’t enough time.

So what do we do to remedy this? Stay up working till midnight and then regret it the next day? I NEVER do that.

(Actually I stay up till 2)

Here’s a way to turn your 7 day week into 8. Or your 5 day work week into 6. Or work 4 days and take Fridays off. However you cut it, this one little trick will give you that extra time you so desperately need.

Ready? Here goes…

Get up one hour earlier.

Yup it’s that simple.

It’s currently 5am. I went to bed at 9 (got that magic 8 hours of sleep). I used to get up at 7:30, rush the kids out the door, get dressed with groggy mom eyes, work until the kids got home (or get bogged down with appointments and not get to work at all), do the school run. Yell at the kids for a few hours (they never remember to put their freaking lunch boxes in the kitchen!), make dinner, fight to get my phone for a couple seconds (angry birds have a special place in H-E-double-hockey-sticks), put them to bed, spend some time with my husband and then sit down to work until regret-o-clock only to get up and do it allover again.

And now? I get up at 5, spend 30 minutes making tea, letting the dogs out, making lunches, waking up. Then I get a good 2 hours of work in before heading out for the day. This is the work I had to blaze through at night before I could get to the real work. Emails, catching up with Facebook (just give yourself 5 minutes, ok?), scheduling things, catching up on blogs I love to read, etc. This means that the rest of my day is full of actual productivity and I’ve just added a whole whopping day to my week or made room to work 4 days instead of 5. Hours are the currency here and you can spend them however you want.

You’re welcome!