We all wish that we could get more done or find more time for the things we know we should be doing but struggle to fit in like hitting the gym, or practice self-care. I can’t tell you how many times while coaching someone they say “If I just had one more hour in the day!”. I often work with my clients to come up with great ways to get it all done in the same amount of time we all have. With these small tweaks, you can often find much more time in your day.
- Do the morning in the evening. If the mornings are a crazy rush try to think of ways you can eliminate the stress and frantic routine. Instead, do what you can in the evenings to make the mornings go smoother. For example: set your coffee to brew the night before or use the Starbucks app to order your coffee and save time in the line. In my experience pre-ordering and grabbing it is always faster than the drive-through. Prepare your breakfast the night before or set out your clothes before you go to bed.
- Do the work when it works for you. Schedule tasks when you are at your best to complete that sort of work. For example, if you find that you are the most creative and thoughtful in the evenings maybe you should be doing your more thoughtful work after 4.
- Combine like tasks. What things you do that always generate additional to-do’s? If you always have action items after a meeting like follow up or meeting minutes try to extend your time blocked out for the meeting to include space for you to do those right when you finish.
- Outsource! What stuff can you delegate or hire out? These are things that you can be happy with an 85% perfect job because it just needs to be done. This could be all sorts of tasks that you don’t necessarily need to be doing and you can find more time when not doing them.
- Make a plan! If you remove some of the decision making you can just get right to doing! For example, if you plan all the meals for the week on Sunday you get the time you spend going through the cupboards and searching Google to see if any recipe on the internet has avocado, broccoli, and canned tuna in them.