These days we are all so busy, and in many different ways. You may be working full time and raising a family. You may be working full time and going to school to get your degree. You may be a stay at home parent who cooks, cleans and gets kids to all of their many activities. On top of all of this, I’m sure you want to eat healthy, have time to work out, spend time with friends and of course, take a nap when you need it!

What if I told you that you can be really busy and still fit in the things you want to do? Well you can, and it’s not that difficult once you have a different mindset and some helpful time management tips. Since we are all unique and have unique situations, not all of these suggestions will work for every person, but I can guarantee you will find the one that works best for you.

I want to start by saying that I am a firm believer in a work/life balance. I am also a firm believer in that if you want to be happy and healthy, you need to fit in daily self-care in some way.

Let’s start by talking about some tips to make your busy work schedule more efficient and seem less overwhelming. I am a very busy Marketing Director. In the past decade I have lead teams that were responsible for doing marketing for over 400 properties. In my current job, I am in charge of a team the does the marketing for over 100 franchises. This means a lot of moving parts, a lot of balancing projects, hiring a team, mentoring a team, creating strategy, managing budgets and monitoring analytics. If I take a week’s vacation, I can expect to come back to over 1,000 emails. Below are some tips that help me organize my time and feel less overwhelmed and help my team feel less overwhelmed, while still meeting our deadlines.

• Do not let your emails build up – I look at my emails when they come in. If I can answer the email or take care of the issue, I do it right away and get it off my plate. If it is something I cannot do quickly, and it is not a huge priority I will mark it as unread and save it for later or add it to my calendar to take care of when I have time. I know all too many people who just let their emails build up and then are so overwhelmed, they don’t know what to do.

• Calendar Management – I cannot live without my email calendar. Not only do I have all of my meetings on there, but here is a big one – I block out time on my calendar to complete my projects. I will block at least an hour per day. This ensures that I won’t end up in back to back meetings with no time for accomplishing my deadlines.

• Training/Delegation – If you are in management, sometimes you think if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. This is not a constructive thought. If you put in the time to train your employees, then you can delegate the things to them that you have trained them to do. Even though it takes some initial leg work, in the end it is worth it. It also helps to give your employees more responsibility.

• Phone – Many people only do business these days through email and are not keen on picking up the phone. I would much rather jump on a quick call, than go back and forth on multiple emails.

• Breaks – In order to be most efficient, take breaks. You should step away from your computer at least five to ten minutes each hour. This will help you to be more productive and feel refreshed.

• Vacation Time- You are given vacation time for a reason. It is not just a benefit to attract new employees. It is a benefit that is needed to make sure employees have time to take a break and relax from work. We spend most of our time at work, so vacation is an opportunity to spend quality time with our friends and families. And this is so important. Take your vacation. Do not feel guilty. The work will be there when you get back. Let’s next talk about time management in our personal lives. This is especially important for those trying to raise a family. Children these days are so over scheduled, and as parents we find that we lose all of our personal time. Here are some tips to help you gain some of your own time back and help to make your household a peaceful place.

• Cooking – Many people beat themselves up because they have no time to cook healthy meals. Here are some things you can do to help with that:

• Pick one day a week to food prep for the entire week

• Order grocery delivery or pickup- this is life changing and means you do not have to spend an hour or more each week at the grocery store. If you do feel the need to keep shopping yourself, make a list and only go once per week. Also, stock up on bulk items at places like Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s. This ensures that you will always have the things you need on hand to cook a healthy meal.

• Staples – Make sure you have some basic staples on hand like vegetables, fruit, cheese, pasta, rice, lunch meat, condiments, bread, broth, seasonings, etc.

• Self-Care – Make a commitment to yourself to carve out at least 30 minutes a day for you. This can be for exercise, a nap, catching up on your shows, reading, meditating, taking a walk. The easiest way to do this is to stay on a regular schedule and put it in your calendar. You’re important too!

• Cleaning– Is your house really that messy? If it isn’t, then maybe it does not need to be cleaned daily or even weekly. Pick a day to clean and recruit the family to help. Even little ones like to help. For instance, my five-year-old son likes to help Dad pick up the fruit that has fallen from the trees in the yard.

• Calendar/Planner – I cannot live without my phone calendar. I would be forgetting things all of the time if I did not use it. I put all of our activities on there as well as reminders for appointments and now, virtual class times, so my son does not miss any Zooms. And time for me!

Although these are ideas that can help you. You need a place to start. Start by penciling out your priorities, goals and aspirations. Do this for both your personal and business life. Once you have your list, score yourself on a scale of 1-5 for how successful you are with accomplishing all of these. Then put together a plan to make changes where you did not score so well. Here is an example:

Mediate daily – 4

Exercise daily – 4

Clean house weekly – 2

Cook Daily – 3

Read nightly to my Son – 2

Here is an example of a plan that addresses the above assessment.

• Meditate each night for 10-15 minutes right before I go to sleep

• Start cleaning either upstairs or downstairs each Sunday Morning

• Take three hours on Sundays to cook for the week

• After bath time, read a book to my son

I talked about changing your mindset earlier. Many times we get so busy and so stressed that it is hard to see a way out. You need to adopt the mindset that you do not want to operate this way, as it is not healthy and really takes away from your time. Next, you need to believe that you can make changes and prioritize making those changes.