So, yesterday you spent some time thinking about all things you need to accomplish and you looked at how you spend your time.  In this installment, we’ll look at ways to make better use of the time you have.

Developing routines for common tasks and places for basic objects is a great way to save time.  The more often you do something in the same basic way, the more efficient you become at doing it.  So doing a batch of ironing one evening a week (perhaps while watching a Colin Firth movie) is likely to be more efficient than ironing a single shirt every morning.  Doing all the laundry on a given day, in the largest loads consistent with good cleaning, is more efficient than many small loads, saving time, energy, and water.

Find a standard resting place for things you use on a regular basis and ALWAYS put the thing there.  The amount of time and stress you’ll save not looking for things at the last minute will boggle your mind.  How often have you had to call your cell phone to figure out where you put it?  How many times have you emptied your purse or pockets looking for your keys? Leaving your cell on the coffee table and your keys on the hook by the door will save you precious minutes and untold stress.

Another way to manage your time well is to use the small pockets of time that appear in every day.  You may have noticed that I tend to blog during the last few minutes of my lunch hour.  I can eat in far less than 60 minutes, so I use the leftover time to write blog entries, pay bills, make necessary phone calls, etc.  If you use public transportation in your commute, you can use the waiting and travelling time to read the paper, update your calendar, or crochet a few rows.  Waiting for the kids to finish karate class or for the dentist to finally call you back is not wasted time if you are updating your to-do lists, returning phone calls, addressing birthday cards, using the weekly grocery store ads to plan dinners and shopping lists, etc.

When I find myself with a few minutes to spare, I look for little tasks I can do quickly and easily or at the same time.  For example, if I’m having pasta for dinner, I’ll put the water on to boil before I change clothes and sort the mail.  If I am running early some morning (it happens on occasion), I can take a few minutes to clean the bathroom sink or sort the laundry or pay a few bills.  You can do laundry while you cook dinner. You can run multiple errands on a single trip, saving time and gas.

The key is to knock out the little tasks in spare moments so that these errands don’t suck up the larger blocs of time.  As much as possible, you want to have those large blocs available for the things that are your priorities. 

I’m reminded of the old story about the professor who brought a jar to class.  He filled the jar to the brim with sand and then asked his students to put some large rocks into the jar.  Of course, they couldn’t.  So he emptied the sand from the jar and put the rocks in FIRST and he filled the remaining spaces with sand.

The things that matter most to you are your rocks.  Put them in first and use the corners of available time to accommodate the sand.