If you struggle to find spare time during the day or even the weekend, you are not alone. It seems that every part of our life needs to be timed to precision like a Swiss watch. Of course, the problem is when we’ve got so much to do and not enough time to do it in, and one little thing can throw us off course. We end up rushing around, and this means we feel a lot more stressed. We can have so many demands and deadlines to meet, and it can seem almost impossible to claw time back for yourself. But if you’re looking for some methods, let’s show you what you can do to claw it all back!
Use One Evening to Prepare
The day always begins the night before. If you are struggling with your meal times because it takes too long, using one evening to prepare a base of your favorite family meals can ensure that you are maximizing your time, rather than wasting time waiting for a sauce to thicken or gain more flavor. You can also start using your evenings to prepare a meal that you can put in the freezer. If you’re looking for healthy meals, the fact is that you can cook so many that can go back in the freezer for you to take out, put in the microwave, and then you’ve got an amazingly healthy meal. It also works for tasty treats. The IHOP pancakes recipe found here can be put in the freezer, so you need to make no effort at all to take them out and reheat! You can also spend your evenings laying out your clothes and doing those things that are a major drain on your time during the day.
Work Along Your Productive Periods
You need to maximize your energy levels to get through the day, but do you know what times of day you are most productive? If you are a night owl, you may be better off doing more in the evening to work alongside your chronotype, which is a fancy term for where you are more naturally energetic. Once you understand your chronotype, you can schedule more high-intensity work for these periods of time. This will make life a lot easier when you feel that horrible mid-afternoon slump, but you are far more energetic come evening time. If you are a morning person, can you go to bed at 9 pm so you wake up at 4:30 and get some deep work done before the kids wake up?
Schedule Breaks (Really!)
You may think that having break times is going to slow you down. The fact is that you will be more productive if you schedule breaks into your life, but you also need to know when you will be going on a break so you are not going to waste time deliberating when you should have a break. Lots of people work until they are too tired to the point to function. Instead, building in those natural breaks can mean you will operate far more effectively and you may not feel like time is always running away from you.
Clawing time back is a very tough thing to do, but there are many ways to get it done.
