How to Make Time for Everything

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Whether it is working on self-growth, getting things done on your to-do list, or starting something new, our first response is ” I don’t have time”. So in this post, I am sharing with you 10 practical tips on how to make time for everything. Not having enough time to do things is everyone’s problem. But a universal fact is that everyone has 24 hours a day yet some are able to do much more and excel at life while others barely get the necessary done. It all comes to time management and effective use of your time for things that matter.

Let’s get deep to learn actionable strategies you can use to make time to do everything.

Time management to help you make time for everything you want to do

Here are 10 tips that will help you make the most of your time and help you make time for everything you want to do.

Tip 1: Set Boundaries and limit distraction

To make time for everything you need to make sure you set boundaries by dedicating time for different areas of your life to avoid them overlapping. Firstly should have fixed working hours and time for personal things. When you define dedicated work hours you will be more likely to complete the work during the defined time. This will also allow you to have time to do things apart from work.

Defining boundaries also involves saying no to activities that are not your priority or interests. This will let you make time for things that matter to you. And not waste your time accommodating other’s requests.

You must also find things that commonly distract you and make efforts to limit them. The things that distract you may be different for everyone and also at different times of the day. When you are working you may be distracted by phone calls, emails, or jumping from one task to another. During personal time you may be tempted to spend time on social media or watching series back to back. You should identify your common distractions and limit them gradually.

Tip 2: Prioritize

With many things to do it can get difficult to accommodate them all. But you can prioritize tasks to make sure to make time for everything. Prioritizing will help you identify things that need to be urgently addressed. It also lets you find tasks that are not essential. The most common way to prioritize things is by identifying their urgency and importance. There may be tasks on your list that may not be urgent or important, you should carefully evaluate if there are any significant benefits to doing them. Making time for things that matter involves freeing your time away from the things that are unnecessary.

To learn more about prioritizing your tasks and making time for things that are essential, you can read my post How to prioritize work tasks. Use the below task prioritizing To-do list to get tasks in control.

Tip 3: Plan in advance

If its not planned it may never happen

Planning things in advance is a very effective way to help you make time for everything. You cannot do everything in a day but by planning you ensure that you will do all that needs to be done. By planning in advance you are able to prioritize things that you want to do and spare time for them in your schedule. When your day is not planned you do work as they come along and miss on things that you really want to do. But by planning in advance you lay the road to do the things that really matter.

For example, if you want to do a DIY wall makeover for your house, it will probably get postponed for days as you do not have the time. But if you plan in advance to do that on a weekend, and get the necessary supplies by the weekend you are much more likely to do it. To ace your planning game read How to have a productive day

Tip 4: Be intentional about the way you spend time

To make time for everything you must value your time. Be intentional about the way you spend your day. There are 2 key things to consider while being intentional about your time. These are the way you spend your time and how much time you spend.

You should note how you spend your day and the things that take most of your time during the day. If you are spending a lot of time on things that are not meaningful such as scrolling through your phone or being lazy in that case you should limit the distractions and work on dealing with procrastination. You can read my post on ways to stop procrastinating.

On the other hand, you may not be wasting your time over meaningless things but spend too much time overdoing a task that you have no time left to do other things. In such cases, you need to think about ROI i.e. Return On Investment. You need to consider whether is it worth the time spent on doing a task. Will you get enough return for spending your time? So for things that have high returns, you must spend more time for them but for mundane tasks, you must not sweat over them.

Thus by intentionally spending your time by limiting waste of time and spending enough time on things that bring value, you will be able to carve more time for yourself.

Tip 5: Multitask to Make Time for Everything

Multi-tasking is controversial as many productivity experts suggest it is unproductive. However, I think multitasking can be useful to make more time for yourself when done the right way. You should not do multi-tasking for critical tasks. But while doing mundane tasks you can do multi taking to make more time when you do not have time. There are many ways to do multi-tasking based on your chore list and liking. Here are some suggestions, listening to podcasts or audiobooks while doing house chores or commuting, watching videos, or listening to music while exercising. Responding to emails or planning your day while commuting.

Tip 6: Build Routines to Make Time for Everything

Building routines is a powerful way to make time for everything in your busy life. By establishing a consistent schedule, you can prioritize your activities and eliminate the stress of decision-making. By incorporating task-specific routines you can tackle responsibilities more efficiently. For most things in your personal life for which you are unable to make time, you should try to incorporate them into your daily routines. Whether it is setting aside a specific time each week for household chores, dedicating regular slots for work-related tasks, or even scheduling leisure activities, having these routines in place allows one to make time for most things in routine life.

It is most beneficial to incorporate personal life tasks into the morning routine. However, if you are someone who needs to be at work or college early in the morning you can make the most of your evening by building an evening routine. Here are 5 steps to build a morning routine before work that is best for you and a Simple After work evening routine to keep you sane.

Tip 7: Delegate, automate, outsource

Making time for everything is not doing everything. Most time we try to do everything ourselves without thinking about its necessity and benefits. But in order to make time for things that really matter to you, you must free your time from doing things that are not essential. This includes prioritizing work and delegating to others the tasks that may not be of value to you or the tasks that are urgent and unimportant.

You must also consider automating work where possible, this can be setting automatic bill payments, or setting subscriptions for frequent purchases. Another way to make time is by looking for ways to outsource work that are not critical to make time for things that matter. If you are not able to make time to mow the lawn, hire someone to do it for you.

Tip 8: Skip Perfection

If you are struggling to make time and are not procrastinating you are probably a perfectionist and you are spending way too much time doing things. It is best to complete a work instead of having an incomplete perfect task. It goes back to being intentional with your time. You should focus on completing a task that is satisfactory and accurate instead of trying to make things perfect and improvising them. Judge the task by the value it brings to your goals and don’t waste your time and energy towards doing everything perfectly.

A good way to deal with perfectionism is by time blocking, blocking sufficient time for work and ensuring to complete it in a dedicated time block to avoid spending more than necessary time. You can read my post Manage Your Time Like a Pro with Time Blocking for more details

Tip 9: Use Planners

You should use a planner to make time for everything and take control of your busy schedule. With many things to take care of it is natural for you to miss things but using a planner effectively helps you keep up with all your commitments so you never miss a deadline. I recommend using a digital planner as it provides a clear visual representation of your daily, weekly, and monthly activities, giving you the ability to identify free time slots to allocate time for other things you would like to do. Do not restrict using a planner only for work tasks, use it for personal appointments or even leisure activities to get a work-life balance. Using a planner will allow you to prioritize work effectively and reduce stress.

To completely organize your life and never miss anything important you should use below life planner.

Tip 10: Make the best use of weekends

In order to make time for everything it is a good option to utilize your weekend productively. Definitely, weekends are for resting and rejuvenating yourself but you need not spend the entire weekend being lazy. Use your weekends to plan the week ahead and get a better start for the coming week. You can also use weekends for leisure, working on your hobbies, and managing your household. When carefully planned you can use weekends to get rest and even make time to do things you like to do that are generally missed during weekdays.

You should read my post on 10 productive things to do on weekend to manage a busy week and 10 Things for working mom weekend routine

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Conclusion

These are the 10 ways to help you make time for everything. By following the tips shared in this post you will surely be able to make more time and spend your time towards things that are meaningful. It is good to start gradually by following one tip at a time. You should also make a mindset shift to realize everyone has 24 hrs and the way you spend them defines the success of a person.

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