4 Ways to Have More Time

Happy Tuesday, sweet friends! And just that quick, we are a week into fourth quarter. If you didn’t feel this already, right now is the main time of the year where people feel like they just don’t have enough time. With shorter days, the business of of holidays and crazy travel plans, it’s practically impossible to feel like time isn’t escaping you. So today, I’m sharing a few things that work for me to feel like I have more hours in the day than I do. Let’s jump in!

O N E

Offload/outsource pesky tasks you don’t want to do that take up too much time. For me, this is grocery shopping. Because I don’t really enjoy cooking, I find myself walking aimlessly around the grocery store and picking up items that end up going bad in a few days. I probably throw away 50% of the food I purchase because I get tired of cooking and opt to eat out or eat twizzlers for dinner. Sad, but incredibly true. This summer, I started using Instacart to get groceries delivered to my door. I only spent about 20 minutes creating my shopping list, added my credit card info at checkout and groceries were on my doorstep an hour later.

If you don’t like the idea of someone coming to your home, I have grown a strong love to Target’s Drive-Thru shopping option. You can shop directly on the app, drive up to the special spots in the lot and have your items come directly to your car. [P.S. Just pop your trunk for the employee to get everything in the car and they won’t even notice your unmatched socks and hot pink crocs.] With my local Target, we are limited with the food items we can add, no produce or frozen food, but granola bars, water and other small snacks are available for pick-up. I love this for my everyday essentials like deodorant, toothpaste, cotton pads and so on because these are the items I go to Target for then leave with $150 worth of stuff I didn’t need.

On the other hand, Wal-mart has grocery pick-up where you can add home items but not as much as Target. With both options, I save money, energy, and yes, time. No more waiting in long lines for 1 or 2 things or impulse shopping. I order whatever I need for the week on my lunch break then on my way home, I pick up my orders which only adds about 15 minutes to my commute.

T W O 

SCHEDULE EVERYTHING. Seriously, I take about 20 minutes on Sunday and plan out all my weeknight workouts and errands. This has become incredibly freeing to know before the week officially starts what I need to do and allows me to have to make as little decisions are possible after being in the office. With Classpass, I can choose workout classes from over 30 local studios and can switch up my workouts so I don’t get bored. I also check Facebook events (I know, I know, who is really on Facebook these days? Me. That’s who.) to see if there’s anything interesting happening in my neighborhood during the week. Truthfully, I find at least one free workout class and sometimes a cool happy hour or networking free all for $0. I add those to my schedule, plus fitness classes I want to take so I have about half my nights with at least one activity and the other half open to work on blogging, volunteering or personal projects.

On top of activities, I schedule everything from bill payments, savings transfers, emails, grocery picks-ups and anything else you can think of. When I’m bored on the weekends looking for something to wear, I’ll save outfits together on 1 hanger to be worn throughout the week. This is not as much of scheduling as mentally planning ahead but it helps. Since I am not a morning person, the less decisions I have make when waking up the better. My outfit is already set out, lunch is already packed in the fridge and my purse is packed next to the door.

T H R E E 

Brain dump often and fully. Have you ever had the feeling that you had something to do but couldn’t think of what it was but knew you needed to remember and still couldn’t? This is where brain dumping comes in. At least once a week I get a blank piece of paper and write out any and everything on my brain. Sometimes this looks like tasks, sometimes it’s worries, sometimes it’s pieces of a book I can’t get out of my head. Regardless, doing this makes me less likely to have that looming feeling of needing to do “something” and creates the first step to me making my to-do list that I can work on during the week.

For you, brain dumping can be electronic or with a piece of paper but if you can find a way to hang this in your home to look at daily, it can help you continue to add the madness of your brain on paper. I love these large post-it notes to stick your brain dumps on the wall. This tip saves me time just because I don’t have to worry about what I could or should be doing. I know what’s on my plate for the week and I can have a plan of attack and can enjoy my downtime.

F O U R

Know when to single task and when to multi-task. As someone whose brain is constantly going at 38593 MPH, it get hard to single task AKA focus on just one thing and one thing for a long time. I will mention this below but you can batch yourself for 25 minute working sessions with a break. Stuff like writing a blog post or pitching to brands are when I need to single task so I can keep my head day in the creative process. When driving to work or getting ready in the morning, I multi-task by listening to a podcast episode or set of worship songs. As far as brain power is concerned, I don’t use as much when getting dressed in the morning as I do when working on sponsored content. I still struggle with single tasking but have found that it helps me stay focused for short periods and feel less stressed later.

I have found that it’s easy to single tasks when I clear my space. Literally, remove everything from my workspace besides what I am working on so I am not distracted. I turn down the tv, grab my water and snacks and basically glue myself to the seat for that amount of time. Unless there’s a fire, I do not move from that spot until I am done. This is basically adult time-out but it works. Especially when I’m doing something I don’t love like business taxes or going through spam emails/comments, I can stay focused for a short time then be done as soon as I stand up. This decreases my chance of procrastinating through keeping my work time productive.

E X T R A S

Here are a few more small changes to make to feel like you have more time + waste less time:

• Put your phone on airplane mood when working and place in a another room.
• Batch work in 25 minute segments with 5 minute breaks until your tasks are complete.
• Set a 10 minute timer everyday to get the small tasks done that you’ve been putting off. This includes calling to cancel that gym membership you don’t use, calling your cell phone company or scheduling your annual check-up.
• Save home stuff to the same time. In 30 minutes, I throw a load of clothes in the wash; load and start the dishwasher; and pick-up my house all at once in about 30 minutes. There’s something incredible about a timer and how much harder it makes you work. Once the timer is up, I can be done.

Well friends, that was a lot for today but I hope you found 1 tip you can start using today. I didn’t tap into apps as much since those can become a time sucker but a timer through your phone clock is usually you need. In the comments, let me know your best time management tips and secrets. Thanks for reading! -xo, Azanique <3