🌻3 Quick Productivity Hacks That Save Me 15+ Hours A WeekIf you ever said, “I don’t have enough time” this is for you…

The “168 Hours” Exercise

I want to tackle a phrase we’ve all said or heard at least once:

“I don’t have enough time.”

Just like most people, I used to think this was the main thing holding me back from pursuing my goals and dreams.

But let’s step back for a moment and consider this:

Every single one of us has the same 168 hours in a week.

From Elon Musk to Michael Jordan to Dwayne Johnson to the barista at your local coffee shop, we all get the same 168 hours per week.

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No one gets more. No one gets less.

The difference between success and mediocrity lies in how you manage those 168 hours.

Here’s a breakdown of an average week:

Work: 40 hours (for a typical full-time job)
Sleep: 56 hours (assuming 8 hours a night)
Meals & Cooking: 14 hours (assuming 2 hours a day)
Commute: 10 hours (varies widely but let’s average it to 2 hours a day)
Hygiene & Chores: 14 hours (2 hours daily for showering, cleaning, etc.)
Recreation & Leisure: 14 hours (around 2 hours a day for TV, hobbies, etc.)
That’s a total of 148 hours, which leaves us with 20 hours unaccounted for.

Those extra hours could be spent on turning the goals and dreams ‘we don’t have time for’ into reality.

Whether it’s building a side hustle, writing a book, improving your fitness, or learning a new skill, not having time is often not the problem.

Of course, everyone’s life is different.

And since I can’t look into your personal situation, I’m not the one to say how much time you have or don’t have.

Only you can do that.

But the ‘168 hours’ exercise does highlight that, for many of us, the real issue isn’t lack of time, it’s lack of priorities.

“Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.” — Tim Ferriss

So many of us say we don’t have enough time to work on our goals and dreams.

But it’s not about having time, it’s about making time.

If something is truly a priority, you’ll make the time for it. As Stephen Covey wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

As you take a look at your own week, I challenge you to closely examine how you spend those 168 hours.

Ask yourself:

Are there pockets of time I could be using more efficiently?
Are there non-essential tasks eating up hours that could be better spent on my goals?
Are there daily distractions (Instagram, Netflix, etc.) I should waste less time on?
Remember, it’s not about having time — it’s about making time. Even reclaiming one hour a day is a massive win.

Two Hours Of Flow State Work

In our increasingly connected world, finding the space for uninterrupted deep focus can be challenging:

Research by RescueTime shows the average office worker gets distracted every 3–6 minutes
A study by Microsoft revealed that the average human attention span has declined by 34% since the year 2000
A Vouchercloud study found that the average knowledge worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes in an 8-hour workday
In other words, people are more distracted than ever before — and it’s only getting worse.

That’s why, when you learn to practice deep, focused work for 2–3 hours per day, you’ll outperform at least 90% of the (distracted) workforce.

You might just enter the magical ‘flow state’, which is the most productive human state possible.

When in flow, you’ll experience deep concentration, enhanced mental clarity, and increased problem-solving capacity.

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As Steven Kotler wrote in The Art of Impossible:

“During flow, mental and physical ability go through the roof, and the brain takes in more information per second, processing it more deeply.”

In my personal experience, two to three hours of flow state work beats an average 8-hour workday (in terms of output).

A leading McKinsey study even found that business executives were 400–500% more productive when working in a flow state.

To access the flow state more frequently, follow these focus tips:

Plan dedicated blocks of time for focused work in your schedule (I recommend focus blocks between 45 — 90 minutes)
Phone out of sight, turn notifications off, and download app/website blockers (like Freedom or App Block) to avoid getting distracted
Put on noise-cancelling headphones and listen to a ​focus playlist​
Optimize your energy (sleep, exercise, healthy nutrition) to avoid brain fog and procrastination
Protect the morning hours for deep focus, as this is when willpower, concentration, and energy tend to peak
All in all, focus is one of the biggest drivers of productivity.

In just two hours of deep focus, you can get as much done as most people do in an average 8-hour workday.

Identify 3 Daily Priorities

One of the productivity habits I find most useful is to start each day by identifying my top three priorities.

This practice takes about five minutes, but the payoff in extra productivity is enormous.

Usually, my three daily priorities look something like this:

One task to elevate my business (write an article, create a new product, work on marketing, etc.)
One task to elevate my health (lifting weights, going for a run, meal prep, etc.)
One task to elevate my finances (research investments, manage finances, etc.)
It’s my personal rule that my three daily priorities need to be accomplished no matter what.

Even if nothing else is accomplished aside from these three tasks, I still consider it a highly successful day.

This might surprise a lot of people, as we’ve been conditioned to believe that we’re only productive if we’re busy, busy, busy.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Being busy means you’re doing many things. Being productive means you’re doing the right things.

Doing the right things will get you results. Doing many things will get you distracted.

This is why it’s so useful to identify your top three priorities every single day. It helps you to get results instead of simply keeping busy.

Contributed by Jari Roomer

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