7 Time Saving Tips for Busy People
Do you ever wish there were more hours in the day? That you could just stop time for a few minutes to squeeze in another task or finish up another project?
If that sounds like you, you’re probably a pretty busy person. While it might feel like there’s never enough time to finish everything you want, that’s actually not the case. Following time saving tips will help you make the most of the 24 hours you have in a day.
Keep reading to learn 7 of the best time saving tips to keep even the busiest people on schedule.
1. Meal Prep Your Food
It’s tempting to skip breakfast or grab fast food when you’re on the run, especially if you’re busy or in a rush. 31 million Americans admit to skipping breakfast with one of the main reasons being that they’re too busy to stop and eat.
Not only is skipping meals or grabbing fast food not healthy, it can actually decrease your productivity by making you feel sluggish and unenergetic. It also is completely unnecessary: your meals don’t have to be complicated or take a long time to make in order to be healthy and nutritious.
Find some quick and easy go-to meals that will fill you up and give you the energy to tackle your busy schedule. Whether that’s grabbing a granola bar or quickly eating some cereal, you can spare 5 minutes to keep you productive throughout the day.
Meal prepping is also a great way to ensure you get great meals every day of the week. Take the time on a Sunday to prepare huge batches of food and put balanced meals into Tupperware containers.
Throughout the week, you’ll be able to simply grab the container and reheat it for a balanced and nutritious meal.
2. Wake Up Earlier
Getting up earlier will give you more time during the day to get everything done. It’s easy to want to sleep in, but this only will take hours away that you could be using to get stuff done.
You can use these extra hours to prep some meals, read e-mails, respond to messages, and plan out your daily schedule.
3. Get Things Ready at Night
Preparing things the night before will save you a lot of time in the morning. you can lay out your clothes, pack up your briefcase/backpack, set your coffee machine, set your alarm, put your gym bag in your car, etc.
This is one of the most forgotten time saving tips simply because people focus mostly on what they can do in the moment instead of planning for the future. Whatever you can do to set yourself up for the next day will save you time in the long run.
4. Keep a Daily Agenda
Planning out a daily schedule will help keep you on track throughout the day. Knowing exactly what you need to do at what time each day can increase your productivity.
With the help of an agenda or a daily schedule, you won’t waste time figuring out what to do next or how long a certain task will take. This will maximize the time you have in the day to get everything done.
5. Reduce Time on Social Media
We are all guilty of going on Facebook or scrolling through Instagram when we should be doing work. The average person spends 2 full hours per day on social media, whether that’s on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter.
Imagine all of the productive things you could get done with those two hours instead of reading what Shirley from high school is up to on your Facebook feed. You could have a meeting, make a few phone calls, have a proper meal, go to the gym, etc.
Try limiting your social media use to a minimum, or even try cutting it out completely to save yourself a lot of time. There are even computer and phone apps that will block websites for certain periods of time to you are physically unable to access whatever social media distracts you the most.
6. Get Some Virtual Help
While technology isn’t quite at the Jetson house level yet, there are many apps and virtual services that can save you time.
For work, you can try using automated e-mail services. These will automatically send out marketed e-mails that can save you a lot of time. You can also use online schedulers and productivity trackers like Toggl.
For your home life, you can sign up for automatic food delivery services to take away hour long shopping trips. Online shopping is another great choice that can help you avoid long trips to the mall.
There are also services that can help you find the best prices on items without you needing to take the time to look yourself. RefillWise is a free service finds the best pharmacy prices for your prescriptions without you needing to lift a finger.
Embracing technology will save you a lot of time on tasks you really don’t need to be doing yourself.
7. Don’t Forget to Delegate!
Speaking of tasks you don’t need to be doing yourself, there are many that you literally shouldn’t be doing yourself. Learning to delegate these tasks to other people will save you time and allow you to focus that time on more important things.
This tip will vary based on your needs: it could mean hiring an assistant to take care of administrative tasks, or it could mean assigning household chores to your children, or having your partner do the grocery shopping instead of you.
Allow other people to help you complete tasks so that you know you’re focusing your time on the right things.
These Time Saving Tips Can Help You
While you can’t slow down time, there are time saving tips that will help you make the most of what you have. Following even just a few of these tips will save you time throughout the week both at work and at home.
Looking for more productivity tips? Check out all of our posts on productivity that can help you save time and money!
