If you’re someone who has a consistently heavy workload, then I’m sure you can relate to the struggle of there seeming to never be enough hours in a day. As an amateur blogger on a busy schedule, I always find myself asking “where did the time go?” when I sit down to write a blog post or edit photos and realize that it’s late at night and somehow an entire day has slipped by me. I can’t tell you how many late nights I’ve had to spend finishing up blog work in order to me my self-imposed deadlines. (And how many mornings I’ve spent pumping myself full of caffeine in order to get through the days after those long nights…).

I always have a lot of things to get done both in blogging and in my day-to-day life, so the only way for me to achieve them all is to find ways to save time. I’ve become pretty acquainted with the task of balancing a hectic schedule these past few years of my life, so I’ve managed to develop some techniques that allow me to budget my time more efficiently. Hopefully these tips can help save you a little extra time in your daily life as well as make it easier for you to achieve your goals.

Creative Multitasking 

One of the most important things to time saving is learning how to creatively multitask. When done right, multitasking can be an incredible time saver. Being able to condense some of your daily rituals or routines into one opens up quite a bit of extra time in your schedule. It’s all a matter of knowing which tasks can and cannot be completed simultaneously. I like to merge the simpler steps of my day because they don’t require any in-depth thinking. For example, one of the most effective ways that I multitask is by combining my Netflix and exercise. For those of you who may not know, I’m a fairly avid runner. I try to run a 5k at some point every single day. I also, like pretty much everyone else on the planet, enjoy watching Netflix. Instead of having separate running and TV time during my day, I consolidate the two. Since I do my running on a treadmill, I am able catch a couple of episodes of whatever show I’m currently binge-watching while I get in my workout. It’s fantastic because I can get through two things rather than one. Plus, it motivates me to exercise as well.

Time-blocking 

I wrote a post all about time-blocking last month, but I don’t think I’ve stressed enough how effective it can be. For those of you who aren’t aware, time-blocking is essentially a way of plotting out your day. In the morning, you decide on what goals are most important for you and then you assign specific hours of your day to completing each of those goals. Going through this process makes it a lot easier to steer clear of distractions, such as refreshing your Instagram feed or falling down a YouTube rabbit hole, because you assign specific break times for yourself as well. When you know that you have a few moments designated for such things, they become a lot less difficult to resist. As a result, I find that I’m able to get a significantly larger amount of work done in a shorter amount of time, which, in turn, saves time. I think that putting that little bit of pressure on yourself can tremendously improve your productivity.

Earlier mornings 

This one is totally up to personal preferences, but another great time saving strategy is to determine what times you work best at and concentrate the bulk of your work in those times. From my experience, I’ve discovered that I’m at my most productive around 8 or 9 o’clock, or basically a little while after I’ve consumed my first cup of coffee. I’ve never been an early riser, so I’ve had to learn to adopt a different sleep schedule. However, I’m ultimately glad to have done so because it has made me a more efficient worker. It’s important to know when your brain is working at its best and even more important that you capitalize on it. If you have the flexibility, I strongly suggest rearranging your work habits around when you feel your greatest, even if that means waking up at an hour at which you’d rather be sound asleep.

Streamlined Priorities  

If you’re struggling to find the time for all of your priorities, it’s always good to sit back and ask yourself whether or not you’re overdoing it. Let’s face it: we’ve all been at points in our lives where we’ve tried to do more than we can physically handle. While it’s wonderful to possess many different goals and ambitions, it can also be very draining. If you want to give everything in your life your best efforts, it’s crucial to streamline your prioritizes. I feel like this is a good situation to apply the old saying “sometimes less is more” to. Sometimes it’s better to try your hardest at a handful of things rather than halfheartedly handle a dozen of them. Removing activities from your day-to-day routine that infer with your top prioritizes can save you time by allowing you to focus on what’s really important.

How do you save time? 

Sincerely,

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