Do you know the most common reason for not spending enough time with your family or loved ones? For not making lots of extra money? For not doing that home study course? For not reading more? For not doing the things you want to do!?

The answer is always time! I'm just too busy. I haven't got time.

But if you really want greater freedom, if you want to achieve more, if you want less stress, don't let 'time' steal from you.

Here's a quick and simple 2 step exercise to get you more time. This exercise is best done away from your computer. Seriously, do this, just take 10 minutes in a quiet place where you won't be disturbed and do this.

The 'Find More Time' Exercise

Step 1:- Think about the last week. Close your eyes if it helps you remember. Play back each day like watching a movie in fast forward. Think about all the things you did, all the fun stuff, the chores, working, travelling to places, people you saw, shopping, all of it. Run through that last week in your head.

Step 2:- Be gentle with yourself here, this is not an exercise to force you to feel guilty! Last week was last week, this is about finding more time to better enjoy the rest of your life.

So now, replay the week in your head again. And this time you're going to skip forward whole chunks just like you can with a DVD. You have a button that jumps straight to moments that if you could live them again you would spend them differently.

Remember, do not judge yourself here, just be a viewer watching your weeks movie on a screen. Keep pressing that button, and note all the moments you would live differently if you could.

Don't be cruel to yourself here. If you sat in a park daydreaming for an hour, enjoying the birds and the trees - that's not a waste of time if you enjoyed it. The moments you would live differently are usually the periods of time that left you feeling drained of energy or feeling down afterwards for no particular reason. Maybe it was an hour stuck in traffic breathing fumes and getting frustrated, or maybe it was a whole evening spent channel hopping TV without really watching anything. Only you can judge here.

So What Now?

If you really do this exercise it will make a powerful difference to you and the people around you.

Look over your list from Step 2. It may be just one item, it may be a whole page of stuff. Either is just fine. Most of us live our lives to a pattern. Often we aren't even aware of some of that pattern. We tend to do certain things at certain times. It's a good thing. But it's also very likely your list reveals patterns of a particular day, or times within each day, where you can steal time back.

But don't leave this to chance or someone, or something, will happily take that time away from you again. So choose one, or more, or even all of those times you identified from last week - and write an appointment in your diary or calendar for this week and beyond. This step is absolutely vital. Allocate that time to you. To do one of the things for which you've heard yourself say "I just don't have the time". Make it clear to family or friends or work that you are simply not available for that small piece of time. It's booked, it's planned, everyone knows about it in advance. It is now yours. And once you have claimed that time, and started using it for something you always wanted to do, you will never lose it. Congratulations, you have found more time.