Do you juggle multiple ‘jobs’? Whether you’re a parent and work full-time or you’re a student with a part-time job or a full-time employee with a passion project on the side: making the time for all the things and feeling like you’re doing things right is hard.
I get it, because I’m doing it too and I want to share the approach that works for me in the hope it is useful for you too.
While I was at uni I always had a part-time job, working anywhere between 10-20 hours per week, first in retail, then in an office job. Now as a full-time employee I still have interests and commitments on the side that I want to dedicate time to. Those include my coaching business, staying fit, and gardening.
It doesn’t matter what the things are you want to find time for – if they’re important for you, then it’s important to have a system that allows you to spend the time you want on those things that matter.
Understand your own priorities
What do you want to spend your time on each week and each month? This question is as individual as every one of you. Aside from your main job, what are the other important areas of your life?
Write them down and include everything, no matter how small it seems (e.g. attend book club each month).
Creating such a list helps you gain clarity and honesty about all the competing priorities. Don’t judge yourself for what you include, just add everything to your list. Then group them by their importance, e.g. non-negotiable (family, work, etc.) and nice-to-have.
Analyse how you spend your time (today)
It’s time to analyse where your time goes and whether that is aligned to how you want to spend your time. For each of those items you wrote on your list during the previous step, note how much time you spend on it every week.
You can then go through the list and add indicators for ‘I’m spending too much time on this’ or ‘I’m not spending as much time as I’d like on this’.
This part of the exercise is really important for figuring out what changes you want to and can make along the way. For example, after moving from an apartment to a house, we spent several hours a week cleaning and it felt like something we didn’t want to continue doing that way. We were fortunate to have the option to outsource this work by hiring a cleaner who did a phenomenal job each week and gave us precious time back to focus on other things.
Cooking is another item I spend a lot of time on, but I’m very reluctant to outsource it because I really enjoy the process and it’s important to me to cook fresh meals every day. My approach here was to find a way to save some of the time it consumes each week (10-15 hours between meal planning, grocery shopping/ordering, prepping and cooking) and keeping the rest as is.
Set up your new system
Now that you understand which areas you want to change, it’s time to think about what you can do to improve your situation.
A potentially fast solution is outsourcing tasks, but that’s not always affordable (cost) or feasible (e.g. if you live in an area where you can’t find someone to do the work for you).
I’ll share another example from my weekly schedule: working on my coaching business and preparing content each week is important for me and is something that is hard to find time for during the week. I have set aside a 3 hour time block on Saturday mornings while Andy heads out on a big run or bike ride, and during those 3 hours I crush my to-do list as best as I can.
What helps me be productive on Saturdays are:
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Not scheduling anything else that day until the afternoon
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Collecting ideas and tasks during the week
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Spending 10-15 minutes on Friday night prepping my morning work session. This includes spelling out the tasks on my list in more detail and drafting bullet points for my newsletter.
With this preparation, my Saturday work sessions become much easier and more effective, because I know exactly what to do and just need to execute.
Test and adjust
Give yourself a few weeks to test your new system and to figure out whether it’s working for you or needs further adjustments. With my Saturday system, the Friday prep sessions came in when I recognised that I was procrastinating quite easily. I needed clear ‘instructions’ so I wouldn’t waste time thinking about what to do, but focus on doing the doing.
I appreciate that this approach doesn’t neatly fit every single situation and as soon as children and other family members are involved, things become more complex and less easily fit into neat boxes.
Use it as a starting point for yourself if you are struggling with your own busy-ness and with feeling like you can never get it right.
If you want more personalised guidance and someone to hold you accountable as you aim for your goals, hit reply and we can chat about how I can support you best.
Have a great week!
Eva