How often do you answer “busy”, when someone asks you how you are?
The problem with ‘busy’ is that it’s not always productive.
I mean, it can feel productive, but actually a lot of what we’re busy with doesn’t actually get us anywhere.
So here are seven ways you can stop being so busy all the time, while still getting things done, in both your family life and your work life.
1. Track how you spend your time.
Before you can make any changes to stop always just being ‘busy’, you need to know where your time is actually going.
So for a whole week make a note of how you spend your time.
Keep a notebook with you, or use the notes app on your phone, and jot down what you do each day and how long you actually spend doing it.
Then take a look at everything you do throughout the week and work out what things are actually important and which are just ‘busy work’. Anything that’s not actually important, and doesn’t really add anything to your life, just stop doing.
In your family life this might mean stopping:
- Ironing everything (most things really don’t need it if you hang them to dry or fold them as soon as they come out of the dryer)
- Fighting with your children over things that don’t really matter. Is it really worth spending half an hour trying to get your toddler to change out of their superhero costume and into ‘proper’ clothes to go to the library? Pick your battles!
- Doing things for your children that they’re capable of doing themselves
In your work life this could be stopping:
- Emails back and forth about an issue that could be resolved in one 5 minute phone call
- Checking emails throughout the day so your focus is constantly switching between tasks
- Organising your workspace instead of setting up a system once and for all
2. Simplify and streamline
Once you know the things you really do need to be doing regularly, start looking for ways you can simplify and streamline them.
For family life this could mean:
- meal planning to save time wondering what you’re going to cook for dinner each night
- using a slow cooker
- setting up routines
For your work life this could mean:
- letting go of tasks that don’t move your business forwards
- analysing your workflow and taking out any unnecessary steps
If you need some help with getting yourself organised and setting up systems to simplify your life, then take a look at the course ‘Get Organised!’ from Leonie Dawson. She is an incredibly successful business woman who only works part time hours (while raising her family) so she knows what she’s talking about!
3. Batch everything
When we’re busy, especially juggling being a parent and working, we end up trying to multitask. And sometimes you don’t really have a choice.
The problem is that multitasking isn’t the most efficient way to work. When your focus is split between more than one task you don’t do either particularly well and everything ends up taking longer.
So whenever you can, try batching your tasks together.
For family life this could look like:
- Batch cooking meals
- Dealing with household paperwork and mail at one set time each week
- Grouping errands together – if you’re going out to the shop for a pint of milk plan to also drop things at the charity shop and post that letter at the same time
For your work life you could:
- Just check your emails at set times of the day instead of always dipping in and out of your inbox
- Get all your admin done one day, creative tasks another, etc
- Plan meetings for one day a week rather than spread throughout the week
4. Use other time-management techniques
Don’t just stop with batching your tasks, look to see what other time management techniques you can use.
In your family life you could use the pomodoro technique to get cleaning jobs done, or to tackle homework with the children.
And when you’re at work you could turn off notifications on your phone and PC so that you’re not always being interrupted.
5. Outsource
Look at all the things you do each week and see if you can outsource anything.
If you have the money then you pay for someone to help you out or pay for a service to save you time.
If you don’t have the money to spare then see where you can lean on your family or trade with friends.
Things you can outsource to help with family life:
- Meals – order your food shop for delivery or use a service like Gousto
- Cleaning – hire a cleaner to come once a week or create a cleaning schedule that the whole family can contribute to
- Shopping – set up subscriptions on Amazon for things you use regularly as a family, like nappies and washing powder.
Things you can outsource to help with your work life:
- If you’re self employed or run a small business then you can outsource pretty much everything from admin to marketing to a VA.
- If you work for someone else you might not be able to outsource your tasks but you could delegate things to someone else or ask a colleague to swap tasks with you so you can each work to your strengths and save time.
6. Learn and use shortcuts
There are always shortcuts you can use to work more efficiently and once you learn about some of them you’ll be amazed at how much time you can save.
Some shortcuts to help with family life could be:
- Using meal services or pre-prepped food to make cooking quicker and easier
- Simplifying your cleaning by using multi-purpose products
- Using tips like storing bedding inside one of the pillow cases so the whole set is easy to find when you change the beds, or using stickers to label your child’s belongings instead of iron-on or sew-on labels.
Shortcuts to help with work life:
- Whatever software you use at work, see if there are keyboard shortcuts you can use, or methods that are more time-efficient than the way you currently do things
- Set up email templates and instructions for where emails should be filed when they come into your in-box
7. Know what you’ll do when you’re not ‘busy’
It might sound a bit strange, but if you think about it and realise that you’re keeping busy because you don’t actually know what to do for fun, then make a point of changing that.
Make a list of things you could do if you had the time, so you have an incentive to streamline and cut out the busyness from your life.
Once you know why you want to stop being so busy and what you want to do instead it’s much easier to start using the suggestions in this post to free up your time.
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