Time Crunch? How to Get Those Few Extra Minutes Out of Your Day!
We all have those days when it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day. How to get to the drycleaners, take the kids to soccer, and get dinner made (and eaten and cleaned up!) before we run out of time? Or run out of patience?
Streamlining and simplifying your day can sometimes feel like an impossible task, but there are a few easy principles that can make your busy life a breeze. There are four steps that can help you solve any problem. Assess your situation, plan a solution, implement it, and then evaluate your results.
Let’s say that on any given Tuesday night, you get off work at 5 pm, your kids have soccer at 6:30, and you have a meeting from 7 to 8:30.
Assess: It takes you a half hour to get home from the office, at least a half hour to cook, another half hour to eat, ten minutes to get the kids to soccer, and from the field to your meeting another ten. That’s a total of an hour and 50 minutes, exceeding the available time by twenty minutes. Since you can’t leave work early and don’t want the kids to be late for practice, you’ll have to shave some time off the schedule somewhere.
Plan: Preparing a casserole or other meal the night before that can be quickly heated in the microwave could be a solution. Or perhaps you value freshness and would like to try one of the many services delivering home-cooked meals to your door. Some of them are sensitive to the needs of people with tight schedules. Maybe you could collaborate with a neighbour who has a similar problem on a different day and swap cooking duties with them.
Implement: Pick a solution and try it out. On the weekend, spend some time preparing meals that can be stored in the freezer until the night before you need them. (Setting a reminder in your phone or Blackberry to take it out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge the night before is also helpful!) Being able to whip a nutritious meal onto the table in ten minutes or less certainly takes the pressure off.
Evaluate: What worked and what didn’t? Certainly having the meals ready was a blessing, but that Saturday afternoon spent cooking instead of reading the latest novel didn’t really suit you. Deciding that the cost involved with hiring a delivery service would better serve your interests and lifestyle moves that option to the top. Try that out next week, and evaluate again. Within a short time, you’ll have found the perfect solution!
Streamlining and simplifying your day can sometimes feel like an impossible task, but there are a few easy principles that can make your busy life a breeze. There are four steps that can help you solve any problem. Assess your situation, plan a solution, implement it, and then evaluate your results.
Let’s say that on any given Tuesday night, you get off work at 5 pm, your kids have soccer at 6:30, and you have a meeting from 7 to 8:30.
Assess: It takes you a half hour to get home from the office, at least a half hour to cook, another half hour to eat, ten minutes to get the kids to soccer, and from the field to your meeting another ten. That’s a total of an hour and 50 minutes, exceeding the available time by twenty minutes. Since you can’t leave work early and don’t want the kids to be late for practice, you’ll have to shave some time off the schedule somewhere.
Plan: Preparing a casserole or other meal the night before that can be quickly heated in the microwave could be a solution. Or perhaps you value freshness and would like to try one of the many services delivering home-cooked meals to your door. Some of them are sensitive to the needs of people with tight schedules. Maybe you could collaborate with a neighbour who has a similar problem on a different day and swap cooking duties with them.
Implement: Pick a solution and try it out. On the weekend, spend some time preparing meals that can be stored in the freezer until the night before you need them. (Setting a reminder in your phone or Blackberry to take it out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge the night before is also helpful!) Being able to whip a nutritious meal onto the table in ten minutes or less certainly takes the pressure off.
Evaluate: What worked and what didn’t? Certainly having the meals ready was a blessing, but that Saturday afternoon spent cooking instead of reading the latest novel didn’t really suit you. Deciding that the cost involved with hiring a delivery service would better serve your interests and lifestyle moves that option to the top. Try that out next week, and evaluate again. Within a short time, you’ll have found the perfect solution!