Imagine what you could do with an extra hour each day to put into your business. Time to invest in innovation, space to evolve your thinking and the chance to move to the next level. So how do you do it, and how should you use it? We’re sharing some ideas for improving your productivity and what some tech businesses got out of having an extra hour in each day.
Small changes can make big productivity gains
Freeing up time is easy if the task has a high enough priority.
Dirk Schuler, Founder, Le Wagon Bali
You needn’t necessarily make radical changes. Many productivity gurus, like Tim Ferris in his best-selling book, The 4-hour workweek, make bold promises, like that you can increase your productivity tenfold. These guides have merit, but it’s often small hacks that add up to make the biggest difference. Take, for example, David Allen’s two-minute rule (if it takes less than two minutes, do it now) from his Getting things done method recommends always choosing action over procrastination.
Adding a carefully chosen skill to your arsenal can also make a big difference in how much time you have. Learning to speed touch-type at age 15 landed me an office job to support my studies and has won me back perhaps months of my life compared with some of my two-finger-typing peers. What small hacks in your line of work could give the most back?
Invest in good IT, especially cybersecurity
For companies that rely on tech to get things done, IT plays a big part.
If your IT systems run smoothly, so do the teams that rely on them.
But if troubles hit, you could spend much time dealing with malware that disrupts workflow, or worse, leads to a data breach. With reliable IT security, you’ll spend less time maintaining your tech and more time innovating.
What would you do with the extra hour a day?
Kaspersky asked three innovative tech enterprises in three countries to test the 25-hour day theory. What’s the best way to use the extra time to build your business?
Making the magic happen, with language
Memrise combines the science of how people learn best with artificial intelligence (AI) in an app designed to make language-learning faster and easier. Founder and Chief Technology Officer Ed Cooke summed up the value of the extra hour to the team: “The magic can’t happen without the time to make the magic happen.”
Memrise turned their hour a day into a hundred new ideas, including using the capabilities of AI to make language-learning even more personalized.
Breathing new life into business
YogiLab is an online personal development platform that revolves around ancient techniques like yoga and breathwork. They’re using an extra hour a day to find mindful ways to evolve.
YogiLab found the way they used the extra hour aligned with their platform’s philosophy and their business values.
That extra hour: We wouldn’t spend it outward, we’d spend it inward. And people would see that’s where power starts.
Aren Bahia, Co-founder and CEO, YogiLab
Using technology to find the most helpful information
Le Wagon, Bali is a school teaching the technical skills behind coding. The team lives and breathes tech, so IT management is a time-consuming job. Here’s how the team spend an extra hour to use tech to build their community.
Self-education came to the fore for Le Wagon. They discussed the potential of technology to help filter all the information out there to find what is most relevant.
Every person and business is different when it comes to what works to claw back that extra hour. These businesses all went down different paths, informed by the product they make and the skills they already have. Where will you find your extra hour, and how will you use it to make your business shine?
