5 Biggest Time Wasters

Wouldn’t you love to have more time? Here are some ideas how to make time in your day without adding more work!

1) Time Waster: Trying to decide what to eat when you are in a hurry, already hungry and you have other people to feed.

Planning ahead can make the whole food hassle easier. Many times, we have no time to fix dinner because we are running around like nuts to the next activity, meeting, or practice. A lot of wasted time can be avoided with some simple preparation.

• Planning ahead for the shopping and the food prep creates hours of time a week. Once a week, make your list and at the same time, plan dinners and lunches so that you make sure the needed items are on the list. This will give you huge amounts of time later in the week.
• Keep a grocery list on the refrigerator where everyone in the family can write down items as they notice supplies running low. A good idea is to have a standard list of necessities you buy every week. Run off copies, leaving spaces to fill in other items. (These can be grouped the way the grocery store is set up so you can follow your list with minimum backtracking.) If you hate shopping, take turns with your partner/spouse, or hire someone to do it (If this is not possible, make it as efficient as possible so it takes the minimum of your time.)
• An extra person helping with just a few tasks in the kitchen can make the preparation time so much shorter! Even a young child can help with setting the table and as they get older they can be your “assistant,” and get out pots and pans. Older children can take one turn a week to make dinner. Don’t be too picky about what they fix. Soup and sandwiches can be a great meal if someone else prepares it and it gives you time to sit together as a family. As children grow into this responsibility, they will start planning ahead and helping with the grocery list. If meals are ready to be made, you will find you are not stopping to grab fast food which is so unhealthy and a money waster to boot.
• Keep fresh food in the house already washed and ready to go. Make lunches the night before, for you and your children.
• Keep food in your car, so you always have something handy in times of delays and long appointments. You can keep meal replacement bars, a can of nuts, water, and other healthy snacks handy in your car if you plan ahead. You won’t get hungry and feel the urge to stop by your local fast food joint. Think about the time and money saved!
• Try to find recipes to double and freeze. If you are going to put in the work and the time, double what you do. Freeze half and you have created extra time in your life. (How nice would it be to open your freezer in the morning, transfer the evening meal to your refrigerator, and let it defrost while you are working?)
• When you make a salad, make enough to have for the next day’s lunch. Instant healthy lunch—no prep time in the morning!

2) Time Waster: Getting Dressed in the Morning
Why are we so confused in the morning about clothes? Every day, we have to get dressed. Every day we have to decide what to wear, based on where we will be and what we will be doing. Still, we wait until morning, staring in a stupor at the clothes hanging in our closet, wondering what we should put on.

The typical morning for many people goes like this:
Where is my (fill in the blank)?
Is my (fill in the blank) clean/ironed/still in existence?
Do I have the sock that matches this one?
Where did I leave my (fill in the blank)?

Sometimes we are asking ourselves this question, sometimes other people, much to their annoyance. All of this stress and time wasting could be avoided by planning ahead.
• If you do not have time on the weekend to do much more than get laundry caught up or pick up the dry cleaning, you could at least prepare each night for the next day.
• Even if all you wear are jeans, tee shirts, or work-out clothes, it can make your whole morning routine go much more smoothly.
• Having everything laid out, clean, ironed and organized, can be so calming in the morning. Children benefit from doing this just as much as adults. (Warning: Teen-age boys will laugh at you if you suggest this.)

Starting the day this way can create a huge difference in your morning. You will feel the benefit of creating this space when you realize that you have time for breakfast or a cup of coffee sitting down!

3) Time Waster: Television Viewing
Television is a huge time waster. We need to take back the time TV viewing is stealing from our lives. Examine what you are really doing when you sit down to watch TV. Is this television viewing really a good way to spend your time? Is it really necessary to have it on every night? Are those programs really that good that you want to sit there staring in a state of hypnosis?
I have learned various tricks to shorten the time television takes from my daily life.
• Enjoy the wonderful benefits of TiVo and recording. You don’t really have to watch a show when it is broadcast. Taping it and watching it later can give you back 15 to 20 minutes when you zap the commercials.
• Pick some shows at the beginning of the week that will really be fun to see and only watch those. Become more discriminating about what you watch and plan ahead. Teach your children to do the same.
• Stop watching all the news broadcasts. Remember, the news business is a business. Most of the time that business seems to be to scare us with fear-promoting TV news. You can get your information in print or watch the news for one telling of the story. You do not have to listen all day.
• Limit your television viewing for one week. See if you can have a couple of nights with no television at all. You may be very surprised with the results. Notice how much time you suddenly seem to have. You are creating space and time in your life!

4) Time Waster: Computers
Computers are wonderful and have changed our lives in so many fantastic ways. But we waste a lot of time on the computer. We spend hours on the computer and don’t even realize it. Sometimes we need to be using the computer for work, but what about the non-working computer time?

• Try timing yourself the next time you go to your home computer. You may be very surprised by the reality of how much time you are spending there. Once you know how much time you’re spending in front of the computer do this:
Make a list of activities that take the same amount of time.
For example, if you spend 2 hours in front of a computer every day, what activity could you do in that same amount of time?
Could you exercise instead? Could you read that book you have been meaning to finish? Could you spend more time with people you care about?
• Stop checking e-mail all day long, and start checking it three times a day instead.
• Do not read every e-mail. You really do not have to. Certain e-mails are probably necessary (depending on what you do for a living). Others waste your valuable time. Eliminate these from your inbox and create tons of time in your day. Delete the spam. Delete the ones that raise your blood pressure as soon as you see who they’re from.
Finally, delete the ones that have FW: in front of them.
• If you send e-mail make sure they ADD VALUE to people. If they don’t, then people will delete them without reading them…as well they should!)

Cutting down on computer time can create huge amounts of time in your day.

5) Looking for Things
An easy way to create space in your day is to stop wasting time looking for objects. How much time do you waste looking for the same items, every day, over and over? Keys, cell phone, Blackberry, etc.

How much time do you spend looking for what you need every time you start a project or task? What a waste of time! You go to do some cleaning, and you left your supplies in another room. You are ready to start a job fixing something, and you cannot find the tools you need to start, let alone finish. You go into your office and nothing is where you thought you left it.

Stop. It’s time to get organized. Break the organizing into small steps and do it once and for all.

• Decide on a place for items like keys, phone, etc. and always keep them there. Sounds simple, but so many of us do not follow this rule, and we spend way too much time looking for lost items and getting frantic on our way out the door.
• Children and students need to find one spot for their backpacks and school supplies. Every night, backpacks, lunches, and projects can be put in the same place, preferably near the door, so there is no last minute freaking out before the day even begins.
• Think of the trouble spots. Where do you get slowed down the most? Start with the one that bothers you the most, and go to that area. Buy containers and boxes to hold supplies. Keep them in the same place, all the time, with warnings like DO NOT TOUCH if you anticipate problems. (My children always used to take my tape and scissors. I now hide them.)
• If you are overwhelmed, there are professional organizers who do this work. They are able to help you “zero in” on the trouble spots and give you good, solid suggestions on how to become more organized.

Once you have your tools and supplies in place for all projects, and your phone and keys in a regular “home,” you will save huge amounts of time.