5 Choices When You’re Short on Time

If you’re tired of being tired and busy, keep reading… I’ve got a handful of tips that will help!

Feeling overwhelmed and busy is tough, especially when it seems like you don’t have a choice… but the reality is that you DO (almost) always have a choice in the matter.

If you feel weighed down by piles of laundry, a cluttered home, chauffeuring kids around, a deadline at work, unpaid bills, or a weekly schedule that just never allows you to breathe, I’ve got good news… you can make choices (starting today) to relieve some of the busyness and stress!

But before I share those choices, I want to get 2 facts out of the way…

First: we all have 24 hours each day.

Sure, some of us are more efficient, some of us need fewer hours of sleep, some of us have more helpful spouses or fewer children, some of us work outside the home while others stay home.

There are many variables to our days and lives… but variables aside, we all get 24 hours each day and nothing can change that.

Second: we (mostly) control how we spend those hours.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but before you start peppering me with a list of excuses, stop and think about all the busyness in your life, and the choices you could make to be less busy.

Some choices are fairly simple and easy:

• Waking up an hour earlier to prep for the day before your kids wake up.
• Giving up TV and social media for a week (or a month).
• Having groceries delivered so you don’t need to run to a bunch of different stores.
• Buying cupcakes instead of making homemade cupcakes for the party.
• Enlisting the help of your children and spouse for various household tasks.
• Holding family meetings to plan out your week so everyone is on the same page.

Some choice might be life-changing like:

• Changing or quitting a job.
• Moving to a lower-cost-of-living area so one parent can stay home.
• Hiring help for around the house or with the kids.
• Pulling your kids out of fun activities that make your schedule too chaotic.
• Pulling your kids out of school to homeschool and have more time for other activities.
• Saying ‘no’ to a family vacation or another good/fun family activity.

The point I want to make is that we are ultimately more in control of our time (and our family’s time) than we realize… and the effects these cumulative choices have on our schedule, our family, and our lives can be quite dramatic.

With all that said, here are 5 choices you can make whenever you feel like you don’t have enough time…

1. Get stressed out, worry, and lose sleep over it.

Ok, so this isn’t a suggestion, but it is the reality for so many of us (myself included at times).

If you find yourself trapped by stress and anxiousness whenever life gets busy, you must force yourself to stop and rationally choose one of the following (better) choices to help reduce the busyness in your home and life.

2. Streamline activities to take less time.

Some people are naturally more efficient, but I do think it’s a skill that can be learned.

You can train/teach yourself to look for ways to be more efficient (here are a few examples from my own life).

• I don’t sort laundry by color but by where it will be put away (1st–floor clothing, 2nd floor clothing) so it’s super easy to quickly fold, hang, and put everything away.
• I make my grocery list based on the layout of the store so I can get through as quickly as possible.
• I often make a double batch of a meal — one for that night and one for the freezer.
• I batch my tasks — all cleaning. laundry, and errands on Mondays, all computer work on Tuesdays, most of my school volunteer work on Wednesdays, etc. so I can stay focused on one thing for longer periods of time.

Another tip to streamline your activities is to turn technology off (unless you’re doing something on the computer!)

A few years ago, I made a conscious effort to “touch my phone less often” and it has made a hugely positive impact on my productivity and efficiency!

3. Borrow time from another activity.

You’ve likely all heard of “The Budget Envelope System” — essentially separate envelopes of cash for different line items in your budget (groceries, gas, restaurants, clothing, etc.)

If you run out of money in your grocery budget for the month, you can either buy fewer groceries OR “borrow” money from another envelope (like your entertainment envelope). Either way, you only get a certain amount of money to spend each month.

You can do the exact same thing with your time!

You get 24 hours each day — how to do you want spend it?

For example, if you’d like more time to exercise, to spend with your family, or to work on a house project, you could borrow that time from another activity (forgo a craft project, take a half vacation day from work, or wake up an hour earlier on the weekend.

Similarly, you might forgo an annual shopping weekend with your friends to make time for a fun family weekend at home. Or you could give up TV for a week to allow more time to catch up on reading or get more sleep. Maybe you decide to slack a bit on your weekend yard work to make more time to watch your boys’ football games. 😉

By borrowing time from one activity, you can then make more time for other activities that are more important to you in this season of life.

4. Find someone else to do it.

This might be overstating the obvious, but if you don’t want to make the time to do something… simply find someone else to do it for you.

This doesn’t need to be expensive. 

Think of the other people in your home — can you ask your spouse to help with some of the housework, meal prep, lunches, or errands? Are there tasks your children can help with (vacuuming, taking out the trash, folding laundry, etc.)

You could trade tasks with a friend. For example, if you’re a quick and efficient house cleaner and your friend loves to do yard work, you might consider some type of agreement where she weeds and mows your yard once a week and you clean her house once a week. By doing only the task you enjoy, you’ll finish faster and have more time for other activities.

And obviously, there are times when it just make sense to pay someone to do the work for you. We pay someone to change the oil in our car, and professionally clean our carpets every year.

We pay for fertilizer service b/c we have a huge yard and their chemicals are better than what we can buy in the store. We sometimes purchase carwash memberships because it makes more sense to spend 2 minutes running through a car wash than an hour getting out all the hoses, buckets, etc. and making a huge mess (except when our kids want to wash the cars in the summer!)

These days, you can pay someone to do almost anything for you — from grocery shopping and prepping meals in advance to cleaning your home and mowing your lawn.

If you’re really short on time, consider delegating a few of your tasks to someone else.

5. Drop the task completely.

This choice might not be the most popular, but there are times in life when it really is the best option.

I remember when we were in the thick of sleepless nights with Nora and renovating our kitchen, I basically dropped everything except basic personal care, simple meals, and the minimum blog work.

There have been seasons where we’ve dropped all but the most basic and necessary yardwork for a summer, weeks when I’ve dropped cooking and grocery shopping and instead eaten meals from the freezer and pantry, days when I’ve dropped a to-do that I know is not important enough, and seasons when we’ve dropped almost all our volunteer work.

As I mentioned earlier, the choice to drop something could be a dramatic, life-changing decision — like dropping a career, dropping your home, or dropping the crazy kids’ activities that occupy every weekend.

But remember, you’re “dropping it for NOW, not forEVER”.

Just because you stop doing something now doesn’t mean you can’t ever pick it back up again in the future — even if it’s something huge like quitting your job while your kids are young, dropping out of a sport for a season, or selling your home to live with less debt.

Anything I’ve wanted to pick back up again, I have picked back up with very few issues… so don’t scare yourself into thinking you’ll never be able to do it again (whatever “it” is).

The next time you catch yourself complaining that you “don’t have enough time” or the next time you feel like you just “can’t make enough time”, consider one of these choices and move forward.

Choices 2-5 are listed in order from least drastic to most drastic, so if you’re wondering where to start, I’d suggest trying to streamline your current activities first.

If that doesn’t work, then try to borrow time from another activity or find someone else to do it for you. If all else fails, dropping the activity might just be your best bet (for now!)

I’d love to know, have you recently made one of these choices? What were the results?