Time Management Tips: 5 Ways to Better Manage Your Busy Schedule

Life is busy, no matter who you are. Whether you’re a C-Suite executive, a mother juggling a job and raising children, or a hard-worker managing multiple gigs, there’s a lot on your plate.

At work, it’s meetings and deadlines. At home, it’s soccer practice, sleepovers, chores. And somewhere along the way, you need to find time for yourself.

Your busy schedule doesn’t have much free time built in, but by investing a little bit of money, you can create some for yourself. You’ll want to pick your spots and invest based on what will provide the biggest benefits for your lifestyle and your schedule.

To help you get started, here are 5 time management tips that can help you better manage your busy schedule.

1. Hire a cleaning service.

You know what takes up a significant chunk of time? Chores. Cleaning the kitchen. Dusting. Vacuuming. Washing bed sheets. The average American spends almost six hours per week and almost 24 hours, a full day, per month on cleaning and housework.

Instead of spending an hour in the evening after work or using up your Sunday afternoon, consider hiring a cleaning service and adding that time back to your schedule.

Additional tip: Don’t forget about your vehicle either. You don’t always have time to wash and vacuum your car in the driveway or stop at a car wash on the way home from work.

There are plenty of car cleaning services that will come to you and shine up your ride, whether at the office or at home.

2. Subscribe to a wardrobe delivery service.

The average woman spends 100 hours shopping for clothes each year and 17 minutes per day selecting their outfit. Men spend 13 minutes per day picking out their outfits.

Instead of spending time figuring out what to buy and what to wear, subscribe to a wardrobe delivery service.

These services account for your personal preferences, your sizes, and what styles you need and deliver a custom wardrobe right to your front door.

Instead of wasting roughly 15 minutes every morning picking out what to wear, have someone else do it for you, and spend that extra time exercising, fixing a meal, or just spending time with your children before school.

3. Subscribe to a meal planning service.

Picking out a wardrobe takes long enough, but you know what really takes a while? Eating. Whether it’s just you or an entire family, planning meals can be a weekly, if not daily, battle.

The average time spent grocery shopping is 41 minutes. The average time spent making three meals per day is 61 minutes.

You can get that time back by subscribing to a meal planning service. Some will deliver food right to your door, while others suggest ingredients to purchase while at the store.

Either way, you take the planning out of meal planning and streamline breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for you and your family.

4. Streamline your exercise routine.

Exercising regularly is critical to maintaining your health. It’s one of the best health habits you can have. It’s recommended that adults spend 150 minutes per week exercising or roughly 30 minutes per day.

Now, as far as time management goes, exercise is one of the things you can’t reduce the time spent. You could cut your one-hour workout to 15 minutes, but you won’t reap the same level of benefits.

However, you can make your exercise routine more efficient. Does going to the gym require a 15-minute commute? Consider turning a room in your home into a workout room, perhaps with an exercise bike, so you can cut out that time spent in the car.

Do you get to the gym and then linger around between exercises? Maybe you get distracted by your phone for a few minutes or get distracted in the locker room?

Sticking to an exercise regimen can help you keep that one-hour workout to one hour and not something more like an hour and a half. You might even consider hiring a personal trainer who can walk you through each workout step by step and keep your workout on schedule.

No more chatting with a friend or taking a little extra time between exercises. Your 30-minute workout really is a 30-minute workout, which means you can reliably squeeze it in before your day begins, during lunch, or in the evening.

5. Make the switch to concierge medicine.

One of the worst things for folks with a busy schedule is waiting at a doctor’s office. You wait days, if not weeks, to get an appointment.

Then you show up at your appointment time and wait 20 minutes in the lobby.

Then you wait another 20 minutes before you see your doctor. Suddenly that 8:00 a.m. doctor’s appointment you scheduled has you booked until 10:00 a.m. In fact, the average medical visit takes 121 minutes.

There is a solution to the problem of waiting at the doctor’s office. It’s called concierge medicine, a membership-based primary care model where you pay a monthly fee as a patient.

In return, you get appointments that start on time, every time. No more waiting in a lobby or an exam room while the minutes tick by.

In addition, many concierge practices offer telehealth services and 24/7 access via phone call. Given that the average American spends 34 minutes traveling to a doctor’s office, the convenience of virtual care can save you even more time.

For a business executive with morning meetings to get to or for a busy mom juggling appointments for herself and multiple children, the efficiency of a concierge medicine practice can deliver both convenient and high-quality healthcare.

Use Time Management to Make Your Life Easier

Hiring a cleaning service saves you about an hour. Subscribing to wardrobe delivery and meal planning services could save you another hour.

Making your exercise routine more efficient could give you another 30 minutes and switching to concierge medicine could save you somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour on days you have doctor’s appointments.

The point being, outsourcing certain repetitive and inconvenient tasks could save you four hours per week, at least.

Four more hours to give yourself a break. Four more hours to teach your children how to be good humans. Four more hours to visit with a friend or network for your next job. This year, take some time to figure out how to make your life easier.

Interested in exploring the convenient care of concierge medicine? Download our free Guide to Understanding Concierge Medicine.